Going into this past weekend, the Penn volleyball team seemed to have a hard road ahead of them. Languishing in a four-match losing streak, it was in seventh place in the Ivy League, and mental mistakes appeared to plague the Quakers. Nevertheless, Penn wasn't expecting anything less than two wins against Dartmouth and Harvard - and it got them both.

Basketball lands 3rd recruit for Class of '11 Penn basketball coach Glen Miller nabbed his third recruit for next year in Glenbrook South High School forward Dan Monckton. The 6-foot-5 high school senior from outside of Chicago had narrowed his choices down to Penn, Princeton, Brown and Eastern Illinois before settling on the Red and Blue.

The unrelenting rain at Friday's sprint football game against Navy proved to be a huge factor as the Quakers fell for the fourth time this season, 21-2. When asked to characterize the loss, Penn coach Bill Wagner responded, "It was a very, very tough game.

On Friday, at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, the Penn men and women's cross country teams ran in the 2006 Heptagonal Championships. Competing against their Ivy rivals, the women's team finished in fifth place while the men's team finished in sixth. Women's coach Gwen Harris and her team were disappointed with their fifth-place finish in the five-kilometer race.

Penn suffered a death from a thousand cuts on Saturday, most of them at the hands of Brown quarterback Joe DiGiacomo. They came in many forms. Short screen passes to tight ends and halfbacks. Tosses to wide receivers for single-digit gains. The occasional keeper or two.

Penn men's soccer goalkeeper Dan Cepero fittingly marked his senior night with a clean sheet during the Quakers' crucial tilt against Brown. Unfortunately for Penn, so did Cepero's counterpart. The result - a 0-0 double-overtime draw on Saturday night against the Ivy League's defending co-champions - probably belied the flow of the game.

Two straight overtime games, two straight kicks shanked to the right and two straight Ivy League losses. In the end, that was the fate of the Penn football team.

Al Bagnoli said Saturday that he doesn't operate an NFL franchise, so he cannot solve his kicking woes by just cutting the ineffective junior Derek Zoch and signing a free agent. That much is true, but I also think that if Al Bagnoli coached an NFL team, he might not be coaching it much longer.

It was just a matter of time before one of their shots found the back of the net. Behind two late goals by freshman forward Jessica Fuccello, the women's soccer team overcame a two-goal deficit to tie Brown, 2-2, after 110 minutes of play yesterday at Rhodes Field.

Kristin Connelly had never started a game in her four-year Quakers career, and she only appeared in eight games over that span. Yesterday, however, she was the hero. Senior Day became Kristen Connelly Day after she deflected Margaretha Ehret's blast for the lone goal in a 1-0 victory over Brown.

The young Penn women's soccer team has already matched last year's win total. Now, with two games remaining, the Quakers have a chance to achieve the 10-win season for which they have strived since Day 1. This will be no easy task, however, as Penn (8-4-2, 1-3-1 Ivy) hosts Brown (9-3-3, 3-1-1) this Sunday afternoon.

Homecoming games are usually scheduled to set the home team up for an easy win. The matchup is picked months in advance to ensure that the larger-than-average crowd leaves the game satisfied. But the men's soccer team will not be facing any pushovers tomorrow.

The Penn football team lost in overtime for the second straight week, falling 30-27 to Brown. Until Brown tied the game late in the fourth quarter, it appeared as if the highlight of the contest would be Chris Wynn's 98-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in the third quarter.

This weekend, the Penn volleyball team will hope that home-court advantage, as well as aggressive hitting and solid defense, can help it win two games after last weekend's two road losses. Both Harvard (9-10, 3-5 Ivy) and Dartmouth (10-8, 4-4) come to town as the Quakers try to improve on their seventh-place standing in the Ivy League.

Week 7 is officially trap week in the Ivy League. Yale and Princeton, both coming off huge wins, put their perfect records on the line with a pair of winless teams. No. 18 Princeton (-10.5) at Cornell On paper, it doesn't look like much of a test for one of the two unbeatens left in Division I-AA.

In front of the players who created it, Al Bagnoli is hoping for some repeated history tomorrow. This Homecoming, Penn (4-2. 2-1 Ivy) is facing Brown (2-4, 1-2) on Oct. 28, just as it did in 2000. The previous weekend that year, the Quakers had lost by three at Yale, just like what occurred this past weekend.

The Penn rowing teams are gearing up for a busy weekend, which begins with the Head of the Schuylkill Regatta tomorrow and ends with the Princeton Chase Sunday. The annual HOSR will feature races with college teams from all over the country, as well as a variety of races ranging from high schools to rowers ages 60 and above.