As finals week approaches for students around campus and the stress in the air seems to outnumber the pollen count, tensions are rising in the sports world as well. Spring regular seasons are coming to a close, and only several meets stand in the way of Penn track and field's pursuit of regional and national success.

While most of the campus will be out celebrating Spring Fling on Saturday, Penn men’s lacrosse will be faced with a must-win game for the second week in a row if it wants to keep its Ivy League and NCAA Tournament hopes alive.

It's title time. This Friday, Penn’s men's and women's golf will take to the course for the Ivy League Championship.

It was a big-time stage for a big-time game — but by the slimmest of possible margins, Penn baseball couldn’t get the big-time win it’d been seeking for decades.

For me and my fellow athletes, Spring Fling goes one of two ways: you’re either in town constantly turning down invitations to darties, or you’re not in town and are forced to live vicariously through your friend’s drunk snapchat stories.

Beyond calculus and chemistry, however, one skill stands out to me as something I didn’t learn when I was five — something I’m still trying to wrap my head around. It’s a nebulous concept, one that is hard to pinpoint in writing but easy to identify by experience. That concept is leadership.

Two and a half years after being selected by the Boston Red Sox in the 36th round of the 2014 first-year player draft and committing to pitch for the Quakers, Wilpon found himself walking away from the game for good. 

It's been 60 years since Penn last hosted the East Regionals in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, when the Palestra saw March Madness played out under its roof for four straight years in 1954-57.

We started out the season trying to find our identity. While we had many of the same players, it was not the same team. We battled through some tough losses, but only to come out stronger. We were able to do that by focusing on one possession at a time. We took that mentality through to the end of the season.

With such a star-studded senior class, Penn softball is desperate for a late season rally to send some of its top contributors off in style.

Most athletes, including myself, come in with a perfect image of what it means to be a Division I athlete. I committed in the fall of my junior year to Penn field hockey as a goalkeeper. Unfortunately, the experience that I endured was something so unexpected and disheartening that still, to this day, it's hard to accept.

Honorable Mention All-Ivy. 23 wins. 232 saves. 1,757 minutes played. So far, that is the legacy that the goalkeeper will leave behind from her two seasons with the Quakers. Quite possibly, fans may have never had the chance to witness her sheer dominance, but fate, as always, intervened.

From a development standpoint, a collegiate athlete’s freshman season is critical. It is a time of learning by doing, developing skills, and getting an initial taste of college athletics.

It was just one of those days. That's all that needs to be said to describe Penn rowing's performances this weekend. The women's, men's heavyweight and men's lightweight squads all took encouraging yet frustrating second-place finishes in their respective meets.

At this time last year, Penn baseball was looking up at Princeton in the Ivy League standings after dropping three of four games away in New Jersey. Now, a year later, the Quakers celebrated enthusiastically in their dugout following a massive four-game home sweep of their bitterest rivals.

This one hurts. Penn softball entered this weekend's four game set with Princeton on the upswing, winners of four of their last five, and in prime striking distance, just one game back from the Tigers in the Ivy South Division. But now, it's all but over.

The women’s squad (10-8, 3-2 Ivy) rebounded from a 0-2 start in Ivy play and roared into impressive form, with a weekend sweep of Brown and Yale leading them to three straight wins. The men (14-9, 1-3) responded to a 3-0 deficit against Brown to complete an impressive 4-3 comeback. With this weekend producing some of the Red and Blue’s best tennis, it seems right to highlight some of the stars on the court this weekend.