The Penn women’s cross country team finds itself in with freshman phenoms — and identical twin sisters — Cleo and Clarissa Whiting.

This Saturday, freshman Cleo Whiting and sophomore Thomas Awad will travel to Terre Haute, Ind., where they will both compete in the NCAA National Cross Country Championships. Indiana State’s LaVern Gibson Championship Course will play host this weekend to not only the nation’s best cross country teams, but also the fastest individual runners in the country.

The Penn cross country team picked a really good day to have its best race of the season.

After a strong showing two weeks ago at Heptagonal Championships, the Red and Blue are looking to improve upon their pre-meet rankings of ninth for the men and eighth for the women. Both teams are chasing top six finishes in the region.

The men and women of Penn cross country both finished in sixth place at Saturday’s Heptagonal Championships — the Ivy League’s de facto championship meet — in Princeton.

Penn’s cross country runners might be young, but they know their history. And they know full well how important it is to succeed at Saturday’s Heptagonal Championships at Princeton, an Ivy tradition since 1934.

Part of the team competed in the Princeton Invitational, while other runners competed in the Pre-National Invitational at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Ind.

On Saturday, the Quakers will compete in the 40th Annual Paul Short Invitational Meet at Lehigh, one of the toughest collegiate races on the East Coast.

Although Penn cross country failed to grab a podium spot, the Quakers ran a solid final tune-up race at the Main Line Invitational Meet against some strong competition.

When asked what the goal was when it came to the upcoming Main Line Invitational meet, coach Steve Dolan and seniors Conor Nickel and Kersie Jhabvala all responded with the same slogan: “A team first race.”

The Penn men’s and women’s cross country teams are scheduled to set off running this Friday night in their first race, the Big 5 Meet at Belmont Plateau right here in Philadelphia.

Passion for both school and running is what makes sophomore Elyssa Gensib a model student-athlete. When it comes to academics and athletics, Gensib is not afraid to push her limits.

The Penn men’s and women’s cross country seasons came to an end Friday at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships, with a number of strong performances from underclassmen giving the team optimism for the future.

Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams competed at Lehigh’s Paul Short Invitational on Friday. Out of 33 teams, the men finished in first, while the women finished 16th out of 40 schools.

Senior George Dickson III may never benefit from the vast improvement Penn hopes Steve Dolan will bring to the program, but the runner has still helped mentor freshmen and impressed coaches with his leadership.

Senior Leslie Kovach finished second for the women while the men’s team had strong performances from its freshmen.

Beauregard-Breton’s cross-country career did not start until two years ago, when she was recruited to run for the Deerfield Academy, a prestigious Massachusetts preparatory school.