Last week, my colleague argued that we still didn't know much about this team. But after the game against Lehigh, we do know a few things: they can spread the ball around, they can score, and they can force key turnovers.

In reality, the game should not be used as a barometer — the Red and Blue were facing off against a winless Division II team. Drawing conclusions from the matchup would be like judging your guitar skills based on a couple rounds of Rock Band (on easy mode).

It would be silly to say that the Red and Blue aren’t championship contenders, but there is an extreme danger with using these past two seasons as a benchmark for the upcoming one.

The arc of the program is bending towards progress, and it’s not hard to see. 

Anyone who has spent time around our team over the past two years has heard that word. But to us, it is more than a word. It is what we believe in. It is what drives us. It is what takes more than 100 players and over 20 staff members from so many different backgrounds and bands us together for a four-month journey each fall.

We’ve established that the Quakers can be dangerous when labeled an underdog. So following that logic, the poll did them a favor by making them one again in 2017.

Athletes are creatures of habit. Whether it’s Dwight Howard singing “Single Ladies” on the free throw line, or Bryce Harper showering seven times a day, or senior sprint football linebacker Quinn Karam wearing the same upper body garment (I don’t think it qualifies as a shirt anymore) under his pads for every game for seven years, most athletes tightly clutch these insane superstitions or routines and swear they are essential for peak performance. One of the most ubiquitous of these routines is the pregame playlist.

After spending more than a year researching Farewell Addresses for my thesis, I would have figured I’d have some idea how to say goodbye.

I wish I could start this column out with a heartwarming anecdote, a poignant quote from a press conference from years past that still resonates with me or something of the sort.

I was standing in the bathroom of my house on campus, brushing my teeth after a late night of working on the sports section of the Daily Pennsylvanian.

With a division-clinching win over Columbia, Penn baseball took home one of the most monumental wins in program history. And, quite simply, the response we saw today is evidence that coach John Yurkow’s Quakers have finally taken that elusive next step.

Simply put, the Penn Relays is not only a bucket list experience, but it’s one that should keep you coming back, too. The roaring — and conspicuously Jamaican — crowds, the star power, the fanfare, the atmosphere and so much more provide everyone in attendance something to enjoy.

I didn’t love football immediately. I played tackle football for the first time in eighth grade on a team of 16 players and decided I wanted to play quarterback the day before my first practice. My coaches let me because I could remember all the plays, and I didn’t mind touching the center’s butt before every play — quite a consideration for 13 year olds.

For me and my fellow athletes, Spring Fling goes one of two ways: you’re either in town constantly turning down invitations to darties, or you’re not in town and are forced to live vicariously through your friend’s drunk snapchat stories.

Beyond calculus and chemistry, however, one skill stands out to me as something I didn’t learn when I was five — something I’m still trying to wrap my head around. It’s a nebulous concept, one that is hard to pinpoint in writing but easy to identify by experience. That concept is leadership.

We started out the season trying to find our identity. While we had many of the same players, it was not the same team. We battled through some tough losses, but only to come out stronger. We were able to do that by focusing on one possession at a time. We took that mentality through to the end of the season.

Most athletes, including myself, come in with a perfect image of what it means to be a Division I athlete. I committed in the fall of my junior year to Penn field hockey as a goalkeeper. Unfortunately, the experience that I endured was something so unexpected and disheartening that still, to this day, it's hard to accept.