For a typical head coach, summer vacation might signal the time to hit the recruiting trail, scheme for the upcoming season and enjoy the rare opportunity to unwind with the constant frenzy of the school year taking a brief pause. But Penn volleyball coach Kerry Carr did things a tad differently.

Kerry Carr could have opted to select her whole senior class as the team's group of captains for a second straight year.

There are some things in this world that I’ll never understand: quantum physics, rainbows, Amy Gutmann’s ability to defy age and how Penn field hockey remains criminally underrated each and every year.

If anyone thought Penn field hockey’s success in 2015 was a fluke, they’re more than ready to tell you otherwise in 2016. After achieving a 13-3 record last season and finishing tied for second place in the Ivy League after a heartbreaking overtime loss to rival and Ivy champ Princeton, the Quakers look poised to make a jump into the national spotlight this season.

Some people just live to help others. Last year for Penn field hockey, that statement applied to nobody better than Elizabeth Hitti, whose 18 assists in her senior year saw her break both the career and single-season school records in the category.

The challenge for the Quakers is two-fold this weekend. Not only are they coming up against a pair of top-tier teams in Lehigh and North Carolina — their opponents are already into their seasons.

As far as bitter losses go, this one was a zero on the PH scale. Penn field hockey came into the final game of its 2015 season looking to do something it hadn’t accomplished in over a decade: win a share of an Ivy League title. However, one crushing overtime later, the Red and Blue were forced to settle with a frustrating end to the season.

They say the best offense is a good defense. Sometimes, you just need a good offense. For Penn women’s soccer, that is the mantra for this new season.

Five years, two surgeries, four coaches, two schools – women’s soccer’s Paige Lombard has seen it all.

It was a trial by fire for Penn women’s soccer this weekend, as they fell victim to a powerful Maryland side led by a familiar face under the sweltering heat at Rhodes Field.

A season of tempests and droughts. That was the volatile nature of Penn Women’s Soccer’s often-electrifying, often-frustrating 2015 campaign.

The program's greatest team in recent memory lost NCAA All-Americans Sam Mattis and Tommy Awad — as well as other star athletes — but perhaps the most notable loss came from the coaching staff that vaulted the team up to its relative success on the Ivy League and national stages in 2016. 

Success is just a small part of why we cover Penn’s teams, as are the teams themselves. More importantly than the teams, we cover the athletes.

Coming off of winning a share of the Ivy title in 2015, Penn football was predicted to finish second in the Ancient Eight preseason media poll this year, trailing only Harvard.

Penn men’s basketball unveiled their 2016-17 schedule Monday, and, much like the team, it will look quite a bit different than in past years. The 27-game schedule features 13 games at the Palestra, including the standard seven versus Ivy opponents.

After a disappointing 13-13 finish to the season last season, head coach Kerry Carr has decided to make an offseason splash that she hopes will set Penn Volleyball up for future success. Newest assistant coach Scott Schweihofer joins Carr’s staff in the hopes of bringing the Ivy title back to Philadelphia for the first time since 2010. After spending the last two years at George Mason University as the team’s top assistant and recruiting coordinator, Schweihofer comes to Penn after helping the Patriots to their best single-season win total in six years.

As the opening credits appear to the tune of the music score, Ray Priore is readying for his first season as head coach of the Penn football team, his 29th year as part of the staff.