Penn senior Ibrahim Jaaber has been named Big 5 Player of the Year, a source with knowledge of the proceedings said yesterday.

Villanova senior Curtis Sumpter couldn't be happier to be done with his college career. And after five years of ups and downs with the Wildcats, the big man is finally ready to take the next step in his career - hopefully on the NBA hardwood.

Believers in momentum, that mysterious intangible that athletes and coaches love to harp on, could claim that the Penn baseball team is nearly guaranteed a win today after a clutch sweep of Cornell this weekend. But if the Quakers' tendencies this season are any indicator, today's contest against Lehigh (11-22-1, 1-11 Patriot) will not be a cakewalk, even with Penn riding the boost of two division wins.

When Penn last beat Dartmouth, junior attacker Rachel Manson was four years old and "had a lacrosse stick around but I wasn't really playing," she said.

Down but not out. That was the message that the seniors on the men's lacrosse team were preaching heading into the game against Brown on Saturday. "There was a lot of motivation to finish 3-3 and not 2-4 in the Ivy League," senior David Cornbrooks said. "It's pretty easy to get up for a game like this.

There is a first time for everything, including becoming a giant-killer. Annie Kinsey helped deliver it to Penn in a big way. Kinsey hit two big home runs in the second game of the Quakers' doubleheader against division-leading Cornell Saturday, as Penn took the second game 6-5.

After his team began the year 1-7, Jason Pinsky was tired of hearing about how Penn couldn't win. "Everyone has been doubting us this whole year saying, 'you guys are losing every match,'" he said. "But we played eight top-20 teams in the country. As of now, it's really paying off.

After being picked to finish dead last in the Ivy League in Baseball America's preseason poll, the Quakers felt they had a lot to show to an audience that was convinced Penn wouldn't improve from last season. But if any doubts remained about the team's talent, they should be silenced after this weekend.

Penn saw seven years of frustration erased this weekend. The women's rowing team breezed past their competition, winning all five races on Saturday and both trophies in the Class of '89 Plate. The team traveled to New Brunswick, N.J. to compete against Rutgers and Cornell.

Marissa Rosen and Lizzie Lowe found the confines of the NCAA East Regional less accomodating than cozy Hutchinson Gymnasium. Two of Penn's best gymnasts, Rosen and Lowe, competed against the nation's best Saturday at the NCAA Northeast Regionals at the University of Michigan.

Two loss columns read zero at the end of the weekend. The Penn women's tennis team extend its Ivy win streak to 5-0, while the Quakers' Lauren Sadaka kept her own undefeated run in the spring alive. Harvard and Dartmouth were no match for the Quakers, both falling by 7-0 margins.

Penn women's track coach Gwen Harris didn't even know that she had seven first-place finishes. "Really?" she said. "Wow. I knew we did well but . wow, great." It might have been just too many to count as the Penn women scored 81 points at Princeton on Saturday, coming in first and beating track powerhouses Princeton and Yale.

For the Penn women's lacrosse team, it has been a season of reversing trends and tearing apart opponents that seemed unbeatable in the past.

Both the Penn men's and women's track teams will be in action this weekend, but the teams will only share one thing in common. And if it's not the venue, the objective or the opponents then what is it? The weather. Both teams are hoping that good old Mother Nature can give them a good weekend in order perform at their highest levels.

There are only four teams in the Gehrig Division of the Ivy League. Yet Penn has not finished with even a share of first since Mark DeRosa's senior season ten years ago. Sole possession has eluded them for even longer. The Quakers (13-14, 7-5 Ivy) can take a huge step towards erasing that futility this weekend when they take on first-place Cornell (12-14, 5-3).

At 2-3 with one Ivy League game to play, the men's lacrosse team is out of title contention. And at 5-5, the possibility of an NCAA Tournament bid is getting dimmer and dimmer. "We talked about it [yesterday] after practice, we just want to go out with some pride," sophomore attacker Craig Andrzejewski said.

No one on the women's tennis team knows what it feels like to beat Harvard. But the Quakers are hoping to change that by the time they fly back from New England on Saturday night. Penn's critical weekend starts on Friday at Harvard (3-12, 1-1) before they travel to Hanover to take on Dartmouth (8-7, 0-2) Saturday.