When Christina Khosravi stepped to the plate in the ninth inning - the second frame of bonus softball - she had redemption on her mind. The senior co-captain got what she wanted, lacing a single into the right-centerfield gap to plate the fifth and winning run over La Salle.

Watching Jessie Lupardus dominate hitters now, it's hard to imagine that just four months ago they were dominating her. "I gave up five earned runs, a lot of hits, and it was really a wake-up call," Lupardus said of her first fall exhibition game. "In the offseason I worked my butt off, and being able to come out and show that I am the anchor of the staff is something that is really important to me.

When the women's lacrosse team traveled to Baltimore last year to take on Johns Hopkins, the then-No. 14 Quakers upset the No. 12 Blue Jays 12-4, giving Penn its first-ever win over its Maryland rival. But this year, the tables have turned. The No. 8 Quakers (7-1) are now the higher-ranked team and look to avoid a revenge upset by the No.

Perhaps women's golf coach Francis Vaughn is a fan of the recent Adidas advertising campaign, "Impossible is Nothing." After another disappointing finish in his team's second tournament of the spring season, Vaughn still believes that the Quakers have a chance to compete at the Ivy League Championships in April.

For the Penn men's golfers, practice always starts with a long drive. But not the kind of drive you're thinking of. Without traffic, they can be at the team's home course to practice in thirty minutes. With traffic, who knows? And in the winter, when they can only use some camera equipment, a mat and a net, it's not easy to work on course management, unless you trust the accuracy of Pottruck's simulator.

In an effort to channel some good old bulletin-board inspiration, the men's lightweight crew team picks daily quotes for the boathouse, chosen for their encouragement and insight. Dave Mannion's favorite? "It's from Ben Hogan," the sophomore rower prefaced.

The Quakers are in the middle of a thoroughly tiring week. They will face Saint Joseph's at 3 p.m. today, and again tomorrow, after already playing four games totaling 36 innings the last three days. The Hawks (9-16, 2-4 Atlantic 10) are not in much better shape, though.

WEST CHESTER, Pa. A few inches shorter than most of the other players on the ice, but just a little bit sprier, No. 4 seemed to hold the hockey team together. The Utah Edge defenseman was putting on a bit of a show for the sparse crowd that formed at West Chester's Ice Line rink complex, but something about her was a little unusual.

It's not often that the men's and women's track teams compete against each other. It's even rarer that they tie in a relay. And it's almost unheard of that the men's track team would simply brush off the result and eat pie next to its opponents. Penn's first-ever Pride Games, however, were not a place for arguing between groups divided by gender, race or, most importantly, sexual identity.

For Steve Gable, 300 means more than just a number or a movie or an upper-level college course. It is a benchmark, a measuring stick for success in one of his passions and the paradigm of perfection in the other. Gable, the Quakers' sophomore second baseman, is the product of what he calls a "bowling family.

The defending Ivy League champion women's tennis took the first step in re-asserting itself atop the Ancient Eight on Saturday. The No. 72 Quakers used a complete team effort - each woman who played won at least one match, either in singles or doubles - to knock off No.

Unlike Little League baseball, there's no 10-goal mercy rule in women's lacrosse. But if there were, Saturday's matchup between Penn and Columbia would've ended well before 60 minutes were up: The Lions were thoroughly thrashed, 13-2. That gave the Quakers reason to cheer when they lined up in front of a sparsely populated grandstand to sing their rendition of "The Red and the Blue" after the game.

If there were ever a time when one person could impact an entire weekend of softball, this was it. Quakers freshman pitcher Jessie Lupardus left her mark on the weekend as Penn hosted a pair of doubleheaders against Yale and Brown. Going in with the lowest earned run average in all of Division-I softball (0.

Cornell midfielder John Glynn won the opening faceoff, weaved through the Penn defense and found teammate Ryan Hurley wide open in front of the net. Hurley shot and scored. The game may as well have been over. Cornell hung eight consecutive goals on the Quakers, holding them scoreless for the first 40 minutes of the game en route to a 13-5 victory.

For the women's golf team, 13 days is all it takes to finish the spring season. The Quakers tee off at the Hoya Invitational today - just one week after their opener - for their last tournament before Ivy Championships. "Several Ivy League schools competing so it will be a nice gauge for us to see where we are and what we've done with our spring break," coach Francis Vaughn said - although he said the same thing before last weekend's First Market Bank Invitational, at which his squad finished 17th out of 20.

For the Penn gymnastics team, the journey may be over for all but one. Junior Jordan Brewer will find out tomorrow whether her score is good enough to join teammate Marissa Rosen - who has already qualified - at NCAA Regionals. But for the rest of the Quakers, the season ended Saturday in Williamsburg with a sixth-place finish in the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championship.

Just one match into the Ivy League season, the men's tennis team's season is still far from over. But after losing 5-2 to No. 71 Princeton in front of a boisterous crowd at Levy Tennis Pavilion, Penn's chances of winning the Ivy League title are already fading.