For Penn, this contest, and the four to follow it, are must-wins for the side seeking a share of the Ancient Eight title as well as home-field advantage come the NCAA Tournament.

When it rains, it pours. Penn Softball, like the thunderstorm that loomed overhead, couldn’t get anything going in a devastating 8-1 loss to Villanova. The results last weekend showed the Quakers (11-11, 2-2 Ivy) can come back from a deficit late, but this game was over in a hurry.

With women's lacrosse ranked in the top 10 nationally, track and field seeing school records fall left and right, baseball having won ten of its last 11 games and more, the season has seen some supreme successes already — but only one athlete can stand out as the best. Our sports editors take to the roundtable to debate: Who is the Penn Athletics spring season MVP so far?

The Penn club ping pong team is in the midst of a historic season, finding more success than they have in recent years. The Quakers will send five players to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to compete in the TMS College Table Tennis Championships this coming weekend.

In the great balancing act that is being a student-athlete, not only do most athletes thrive, but they push their engagement beyond what is expected. This is the case for the student-athletes who not only take a full courseload while playing for the Red and Blue, but teach for the school as well.

Sometimes, a strong start and finish just won't quite do it. Penn women's golf learned this when it finished fifth out of eight teams in the Harvard Invitational this past Saturday.

Before getting into who rowed the best and what teams finished first, it is important to understand that winning and losing are not always that important in the grand scheme of life.

In game two with the squad down 6-5 with two outs in the seventh, Jurie Joyner hit a home run to bring the game into extra innings. This completely changed the dynamic and the Quakers (11-10, 2-2 Ivy) took back control of the game.

The tides began to turn when Condon strung together a run of hat tricks. In her last 12 games of 2016, the quick-shooting midfielder had nine performances with three or more goals. If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is — Condon’s play progressed from a pretty good early season to an elite performance down the stretch. When all was said and done, her 41 goals that year were the sixth-most in program history.

The first thing one notices about Kevin Gayhardt is his height. At 6-foot-6 inches, the men's lacrosse senior defenseman towers above his own teammates and makes the average observer wonder if lacrosse is the right sport for him. But now? He’s the heart and soul of the defense.

On Monday, Penn Athletics became the first Ivy League athletic program to take the “It’s On Us” pledge against sexual violence, an awareness campaign launched in September 2014 by President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to help end sexual assault on American college campuses.

If every journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step, then every championship season must begin with a single victory. Or in Penn baseball’s case, two.

This weekend, Penn track and field found itself strewn across the country in three different states and two different time zones to compete in three separate meets: the Stanford Invitational, the Danny Curran Invitational, and the Pepsi Florida Relays. Despite being forced to compete without their teammates, the Quakers made the most of their time apart, registering a number of personal bests and shattering four program records.

While it was a tough loss for the Red and Blue (7-7, 0-1 Ivy), the day got off to a promising start as Penn grinded out the opening doubles point. After Penn and Princeton (10-6, 1-0) split the first two doubles’ sets, the no. 3 doubles pair of sophomore Marta Kowalska and senior Luba Vazhenina proved their mettle to pull out a 6-3 victory over the Tigers.

They made it to the final stretch — and they’re still standing. In the last game in a long series of tough matches against ranked non-conference teams, No. 11 Penn women’s lacrosse pulled off a comeback to remember at No. 16 Northwestern.

What a weekend it was for the star goalie of No. 11 Penn women's lacrosse, Britt Brown. Facing yet another ranked opponent in No. 16 Northwestern, Brown had her work cut out for her against the Wildcats’ talented attack.

It may be a given that the Class of 2021 will have some major athletes — but where will they come from? In the spirit of admissions season, DP Sports set out to find out. Here's a top ten list of the high schools to produce the best current student-athletes at Penn.