It was not soccer. Coach Darren Ambrose called it "survival." Fans said that it was more like watching water polo with feet. No matter how you look at it, it was one wild night for the Penn women's soccer team. Despite playing through a mini-monsoon, the drenched Quakers were all smiles after dominating Robert Morris, 6-0, last night at Rhodes Field.

The similarities are striking: Last year, a 6-2-2 women's soccer team lost 1-0 to Columbia and was unable to recover, winning just one of its final five games. Today, four days after playing some of their worst soccer of the season, the Quakers are looking to rebound from another 1-0 defeat by the Lions and avoid a repeat of last year's failures down the stretch.

Following a nail-biting double-overtime victory against Columbia and on the heels of a No. 3 ranking in the Northeast Division by the NSCAA, the men's soccer team is riding high. It's been four years since the Quakers (7-2-1, 3-0 Ivy) and Scarlet Knights (7-6, 4-4 Big East) last met.

With a win over Dartmouth already under its belt, the Penn football team looks to go 2-0 in Ivy League play when it takes on Columbia. There's a good chance that a sentence like that will appear in the football preview found in Friday's Daily Pennsylvanian.

When Division I-AA Montana State recently upended a mediocre Division I-A Colorado football team, the result was considered a monumental upset. So imagine a sport in which top varsity teams are consistently threatened - and often beaten - by a club-level squad.

New men's basketball coach Glen Miller has yet to run an official practice, but the first-year coach has already landed his first two recruits for the Class of 2011. First, point guard Harrison Gaines committed to the Quakers last week. Gaines is 6-foot-1, 175 pounds and plays for Serrano High School in Phelan, Calif.

It's rare that a victory is a wake-up call, but that's exactly what happened to the football team when it narrowly escaped losing to perennial Ivy pushover Dartmouth two weeks ago. But after closing out its non-conference schedule with a decisive win against Bucknell on Saturday, it was clear that Penn had responded.

The spotlight was on Maria Anisimova yesterday as she defeated a player from North Carolina in the finals of the Flight C singles match at the National Tennis Invitational in New York. The freshman came out of nowhere, defeating players from high-level programs and advancing further than any Penn player.

It's safe to say that Sunday's win didn't go the way men's soccer coach Rudy Fuller had planned. Penn generally likes to nip a goal early and hold off its opponent's charge late on. In fact, the Quakers haven't trailed for a second in any of their wins. Quality finishing has been a means to that end as Penn's forwards have generally been more opportunistic than their counterparts.

'Do you bat, or bowl?" The question catches me off-guard. I don't do either, and certainly not nearly as well as these guys do.

It was about two in the morning 365 days ago after another long night as a DP sports editor. I was about ready to leave the office when I got an interesting phone call from another editor. He told me that he had heard from a friend of his that his football-player roommate was abruptly summoned somewhere, and the roommate returned in tears.

LEWISBURG, Pa.- Marcello Trigg took the snap early in the second quarter likely already thinking he could have picked a better week for his first college start. The Bucknell quarterback rolled left and looked for a receiver, but all he saw was Penn linebacker Joe Anastasio, who one quarter earlier had laid out Trigg just as he delivered a pass.

Penn, journalism and the sports world lost one of its great figures on Sunday when Frank Dolson died at the age of 73. Dolson, a former sports editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian and a 1954 Wharton grad, wrote for Sports Illustrated, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Evening Bulletin.

LEWISBURG, Pa. It was only the first quarter, but the Quakers already knew that a win was on the way. That's when sophomore quarterback Robert Irvin connected with wide receiver Braden Lepisto on a play-action pass for a 72-yard touchdown on the fourth drive of the game.

The Lock Haven Lady Eagles came into Sunday soaring on a nine-game winning streak, but left Franklin Field with clipped wings. Their vaunted offense was held to just one goal on four attempts as the Penn field hockey team downed the Eagles, 2-1. Before their game against Penn (4-7, 1-2 Ivy), they had outscored their last nine opponents by a ludicrous 45-5 margin.

All it took was one misplay. One loose ball near the Penn goal, one touch past diving goalkeeper Cailly Carroll and one more notch in the loss column for the women's soccer team.

Injury and little familiarity with college-level tennis did not stop Maria Anisimova last weekend at the National Tennis Invitational in New York, where she advanced to the finals in singles and doubles, both to be played today.