It all starts with Jerel Blades. The winger is on the small side — only 5-foot-7 — but he doesn’t let that affect him. After all, the defense has to catch him first.

Emily Sands and Emma Loving stayed focused during the offseason after bursting onto the scene for the Red and Blue in their rookie seasons in 2016.

Joe Swenson, Austin Kuhn and captain Sam Wancowicz are the team’s three elder statesmen, and while having this few seniors on a roster seems unusual, the Quakers are no stranger to having a youth-saturated team—you need only look to the 2016 roster to find the last time there were only three seniors. 

DP Sports released its Soccer Issue on Thursday, previewing the season ahead and the matchups on tap this weekend. But what about the rest of Penn Athletics? Here's what the other squads who don the Red and Blue will be up to over the next few days:

One player who looked particularly fit and sharp at the start of the season was sophomore winger Dami Omitaomu. While many of the team plied their trade at local soccer clubs across the country, from New Hampshire to California, Omitaomu’s summer situation stood out for several reasons.

After losing their first two matches of the season 0-2 to Monmouth and Bowling Green last weekend, Penn men’s soccer will look to rebound this Sunday at home against Seton Hall.

This year, the Quakers brought in 11 new players — almost half of the 28-man roster.  With the greater size, this year’s freshman class will also be expected to play a bigger role on the team than freshmen of years past. 

The Quakers (0-2-2) will look to break out of their scoring rut as they return home this Saturday to take on Bucknell (1-4-0). Through four games this season, the Red and Blue have only squeaked across one goal: a 12-yard strike off the foot of senior midfielder Erica Higa in the team's most recent game against UC Riverside.

Two narrow losses provided a somber start to Penn men’s soccer’s season, with a pair of 2-0 defeats at the hands of Monmouth and Bowling Green frustrating the Quakers over the weekend.

The men, on their way to a dominant first-place finish, packed a remarkable nine runners into the the top ten spots. Leading the charge was senior captain Christopher Luciano, whose 15:24.79 was just milliseconds behind the event’s top finisher, Zachary Michon from St. Joseph’s.  

In a span of only a couple of days, former Quaker star Alek Torgersen’s NFL dreams were dashed, and — just as suddenly — resurrected.

The Penn Cross Country program has never been more successful than it was in 2016. So much so that Coach Steve Dolan said that their accomplishments “raised the bar in terms of what’s possible.” While the team has entirely new leaders this season, the mindset remains the same: the Quakers are the team to beat in the Ivy League.

Now with a couple of weeks of practice under its belt, the team will kick off its season on Friday night with a trip to Monmouth in New Jersey, before they come home to open things up at Rhodes Field on Sunday against Bowling Green.

While the 82-year-old spent much of his career at Villanova, he was no stranger to Penn. The season before he took the helm with the Wildcats, Massimino was actually an assistant coach for the Quakers. 

With fall athletics underway, many Penn teams will be vying for Ivy League and even national glory. Which team has the best chances of claiming or defending a trophy? Three of the Daily Pennsylvanian sports editors talked it out.

We’ve established that the Quakers can be dangerous when labeled an underdog. So following that logic, the poll did them a favor by making them one again in 2017.

The Quakers opened their season on Friday at Rhodes Field with a 1-0 loss to Lehigh and repeated that scoreline two days later on Sunday against La Salle. The Quakers (0-2) showed promise in both games, but ultimately, they failed to convert on their opportunities.