“Rise and shine” has been a pretty good way to describe Penn's season so far.  This weekend, against top-program Trinity, the Quakers will have the opportunity to do that once again.

And it was a beautiful night at the Palestra on Tuesday for the Quakers. That is, until their game got fully underway.

“QUAKER. OATS.” That is the conclusion to the Penn men's fencing squad's team cheer. Perhaps an unusual way to bring the hype, but the Red and Blue (10-1) are shaping up to be anything but ordinary this season.

On Tuesday, Penn volleyball and coach Kerry Carr announced the five members of the 2016 recruiting class, including Ariana Wiltjer, a middle blocker from Portland, Ore.

Behind the efforts of former Penn Athletic Director and current Big 5 executive director Steve Bilsky, a “Big 5 Classic” doubleheader will return to 33rd Street tonight in a celebratory event to honor the 60th anniversary of the group’s inception.

The Quakers want to be the Ivy League's top team for the first time in nine years, but they'll have to do it without the top player in program history. Sol Eskenazi, who became the program's most decorated player ever with eight All-Ivy awards in her four years at Penn, graduated last spring.

Over a career that spans more than 30 years, David Geatz has amassed a shelf’s worth of accolades and with it, a reputation as one of the league’s most illustrious program builders.

With everyone healthy and playing well, the Quakers felt prepared heading into Ivy play. The team was hot and expectations were high. But things quickly began to go downhill.

Big expectations are nothing new for Penn’s tennis programs, and both the men’s and women’s team go into this year with high Ivy League finishes in their sights. Penn women’s tennis finished the 2014-2015 season with three victories in their last four Ivy League matches, including impressive wins against nationally ranked Columbia and Cornell.

To be the best, you have to beat the best. Penn women’s tennis will have a chance this weekend to start proving that they deserve the exciting expectations surrounding the program for the 2016 season as they travel to compete in the International Tennis Association Kickoff Weekend. The tournament is reserved only for teams ranked in the top 100 in the ITA preseason rankings.

It isn’t always pretty. Coming off of a big win over Princeton last weekend, the Quakers came out flat against La Salle before fighting off a late comeback en route to a 78-68 win on Martin Luther King Day.

The Quakers’ team score landed them fourth of the five teams — a strong showing for the Red and Blue’s first competition, especially with a few shakes early on.

Not a bad start. On Saturday, Penn men's tennis opened up its season with a strong 7-0 victory over Navy, logging wins all across the board.

For a meeting between two of the top five women’s sides in the country, the No. 2 Penn and No. 5 Stanford matchup seemed to carry little of the tension that one would expect of such high ranked goliaths.

It’s Harvard’s world, and unfortunately for Penn men’s and women’s swimming and diving, they are still living in it.

They’re off to the best start in school history. Let’s see if they can keep it going.

After weeks of practicing and an intrasquad meet back in December, the Penn gymnastics team kicks off their season in earnest this Sunday at the Lindsey Ferris Invitational, hosted by George Washington University, in Washington D.C.