It’s tough for a defender to make a tackle while on the ground. Unfortunately for Penn football’s opponents, they have found themselves in that position often this season.

Just before he returned to University City for football camp, Sam Philippi got a call. He was a match. Only a few months removed from joining the Be the Match registry, Philippi was needed as a bone marrow donor for a 30-year-old leukemia patient.

For anyone who kept up with Penn fencing last season, the year was nothing short of remarkable. Penn sent six male fencers and two female fencers to the NCAA Championships and Coach Andy Ma won the Ivy League Men's Coach of the Year.

Another sport, another three-way tie at the top. After winning their third of a title last season, just weeks after the football team, Penn men’s fencing is looking forward to what should be another successful year.

As the rest of the country copes with the task of naming of the 45th president of the United States, Adam Green will have a peculiar task to deal with this weekend: figuring out how to get his sabres past the TSA.

The Penn men's and women's fencing teams are returning a slew of Ivy champions, NCAA qualifiers, and many key fencers from last year's men's Ivy title. But their biggest strength might just be standing on the sideline. Head coach Andy Ma has had an illustrious career in the world of fencing, and as he enters his seventh year as the head coach of both the men's and women's programs, his . His strength as a coach led him to be named the Ivy League men's fencing Coach of the Year last season. Ma was able to lead the men's team to its most successful season in recent memory last year, as the team captured its first Ivy League Championship since 2009, several individuals earned All-American Honors, and the team rose to the number one ranking for the first time in program history.

Sunday, Penn wrestling kicked things off, opening up the 2016-17 campaign at the Southeast Open in Roanoke, Va. Leading the way for the Red and Blue was junior May Bethea, wrestling at 157 pounds a year removed from his first NCAA Tournament appearance.

Penn football’s loss to Princeton on Saturday was, for lack of a better, less-ironic word, sobering.

Wednesday was the one of the worst days of my life. I got up early, made the six-hour drive from Philly to Cleveland, took the train downtown with some friends and went to a baseball game. A lifelong Indians fan, the chance to go to game seven of a World Series was absolutely surreal.

The season ended, but there are still awards left to be had. On Monday, despite Penn women’s soccer’s 1-1 draw on the road at Princeton, freshman Emily Sands was named the Ivy League Rookie of the Week. Sands was responsible for the Quakers’ lone goal on the road, scoring the equalizer in the game’s 28th minute after catching Princeton off-guard with a stunning left-footed shot to the upper-right corner of the net. This marks the fourth time this season the Red and Blue have taken home Ivy League Rookie of the Week this season — with Sands earning three and classmate Kitty Qu taking home the remaining one. Sands is just the second Penn player ever to earn three such awards, with Kerry Scalora having matched the feat in 2010 — only one player in Ivy history has every won more than three Rookie of the Week awards: Princeton’s Mimi Asom won the honor six times last season. Scalora went on to win Rookie of the Year in 2010 and ended up a three-time All-Ivy honoree in her time in University City.

And then there was one. On Saturday, Penn completed the dream season, defeating Post 41-12. The win gave Penn (7-0) the outright championship, and marked only the second time in school history that the Quakers have finished the season alone at the top of the standings.

While it might be a new season for Penn men’s and women’s swimming and diving, the big names haven’t changed that much.

It may not have been the icing on the cake, but it was a pretty great cake nonetheless. Penn closed out its season in a 1-1 draw at its Princeton rival.

After Harvard cancelled the rest of their men’s soccer season, the Ivy League standings flew wide open.

En garde...ready...fencing season! On Saturday, Penn fencing got its season underway with a strong performance at their home exhibition, the Elite Invitational.

From here on out, it’s win or go home. Following Penn football’s 28-0 loss on the road to Princeton, the Quakers (5-3, 4-1 Ivy) will have to win out in order to earn at least a share of the Ivy title for a second straight year.

Instead of next weekend's season finale being at Harvard, Penn and Columbia will play an additional midweek game on a date to be named later. This will offset the fact that both Penn and Columbia were set to play the Crimson in the final two matches of the season.