As the Penn men's lacrosse team ran onto the practice field yesterday, shouting and cheering, it was clear that last Saturday's 13-5 loss against No. 8 Cornell wasn't on anybody's mind. The focus this week has been tomorrow's matchup with Dartmouth (4-4, 0-1 Ivy).

Harvard's record is a measly 1-17 overall and 0-2 in the Ivy League. Dartmouth was dead last in the Rolfe Division last year. But Penn's top starting pitcher and captain Todd Roth is not looking forward to the northward road trip his team has on tap. "It's probably gonna be a really long weekend," he said.

In the fifth inning of yesterday's nightcap against Saint Joseph's, Penn's seemingly-safe 6-1 lead appeared to be slipping away. Paul Cusick walked two in the top of the frame and allowed the Hawks to pull within three runs before he stranded the bases loaded.

Scoring in the first minute, and going on a 4-1 run in the middle of the first half, the women's lacrosse team appeared to be running away with a victory against No. 15 Johns Hopkins last night. But the Blue Jays stormed back in the second half and scored five unanswered goals in the final 22 minutes.

Tom Grandieri is nothing if not considerate. He saved his first collegiate homer for yesterday afternoon, on a day when his older brother - former Penn basketball captain Brian Grandieri - didn't have a single class to interfere with his spectator duties.

When Christina Khosravi stepped to the plate in the ninth inning - the second frame of bonus softball - she had redemption on her mind. The senior co-captain got what she wanted, lacing a single into the right-centerfield gap to plate the fifth and winning run over La Salle.

Watching Jessie Lupardus dominate hitters now, it's hard to imagine that just four months ago they were dominating her. "I gave up five earned runs, a lot of hits, and it was really a wake-up call," Lupardus said of her first fall exhibition game. "In the offseason I worked my butt off, and being able to come out and show that I am the anchor of the staff is something that is really important to me.

When the women's lacrosse team traveled to Baltimore last year to take on Johns Hopkins, the then-No. 14 Quakers upset the No. 12 Blue Jays 12-4, giving Penn its first-ever win over its Maryland rival. But this year, the tables have turned. The No. 8 Quakers (7-1) are now the higher-ranked team and look to avoid a revenge upset by the No.

Perhaps women's golf coach Francis Vaughn is a fan of the recent Adidas advertising campaign, "Impossible is Nothing." After another disappointing finish in his team's second tournament of the spring season, Vaughn still believes that the Quakers have a chance to compete at the Ivy League Championships in April.

For the Penn men's golfers, practice always starts with a long drive. But not the kind of drive you're thinking of. Without traffic, they can be at the team's home course to practice in thirty minutes. With traffic, who knows? And in the winter, when they can only use some camera equipment, a mat and a net, it's not easy to work on course management, unless you trust the accuracy of Pottruck's simulator.

In an effort to channel some good old bulletin-board inspiration, the men's lightweight crew team picks daily quotes for the boathouse, chosen for their encouragement and insight. Dave Mannion's favorite? "It's from Ben Hogan," the sophomore rower prefaced.

The Quakers are in the middle of a thoroughly tiring week. They will face Saint Joseph's at 3 p.m. today, and again tomorrow, after already playing four games totaling 36 innings the last three days. The Hawks (9-16, 2-4 Atlantic 10) are not in much better shape, though.

WEST CHESTER, Pa. A few inches shorter than most of the other players on the ice, but just a little bit sprier, No. 4 seemed to hold the hockey team together. The Utah Edge defenseman was putting on a bit of a show for the sparse crowd that formed at West Chester's Ice Line rink complex, but something about her was a little unusual.

It's not often that the men's and women's track teams compete against each other. It's even rarer that they tie in a relay. And it's almost unheard of that the men's track team would simply brush off the result and eat pie next to its opponents. Penn's first-ever Pride Games, however, were not a place for arguing between groups divided by gender, race or, most importantly, sexual identity.

For Steve Gable, 300 means more than just a number or a movie or an upper-level college course. It is a benchmark, a measuring stick for success in one of his passions and the paradigm of perfection in the other. Gable, the Quakers' sophomore second baseman, is the product of what he calls a "bowling family.

The defending Ivy League champion women's tennis took the first step in re-asserting itself atop the Ancient Eight on Saturday. The No. 72 Quakers used a complete team effort - each woman who played won at least one match, either in singles or doubles - to knock off No.

Unlike Little League baseball, there's no 10-goal mercy rule in women's lacrosse. But if there were, Saturday's matchup between Penn and Columbia would've ended well before 60 minutes were up: The Lions were thoroughly thrashed, 13-2. That gave the Quakers reason to cheer when they lined up in front of a sparsely populated grandstand to sing their rendition of "The Red and the Blue" after the game.