This early in the season, the mound is no place for freshmen. Tell that to the trio of young right-handers who stifled Penn's opponents this weekend. Freshmen Jeremy Maas, Paul Cusick and Sam Gilbert combined to pitch 20 innings over three games and gave up zero earned runs - one unearned run on Maas against Yale the only blemish.

Just one match into the Ivy League season, the men's tennis team's season is still far from over. But after losing 5-2 to No. 71 Princeton in front of a boisterous crowd at Levy Tennis Pavilion, Penn's chances of winning the Ivy League title are already fading.

Daniel Schwartz is a College sophomore from Decatur, Ga. His e-mail address is schwartz@dailypennsylvanian.com.

For the Penn gymnastics team, the journey may be over for all but one. Junior Jordan Brewer will find out tomorrow whether her score is good enough to join teammate Marissa Rosen - who has already qualified - at NCAA Regionals. But for the rest of the Quakers, the season ended Saturday in Williamsburg with a sixth-place finish in the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championship.

With all the attention the presidential primaries have received in recent months, it's hard not to be thinking about New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and Arizona Sen. John McCain. But the candidates for U.S. president aren't the only positions up for grabs in Pennsylvania's April 22 primary - Pennsylvania residents will also vote for a number of local, state and federal positions.

For the women's golf team, 13 days is all it takes to finish the spring season. The Quakers tee off at the Hoya Invitational today - just one week after their opener - for their last tournament before Ivy Championships. "Several Ivy League schools competing so it will be a nice gauge for us to see where we are and what we've done with our spring break," coach Francis Vaughn said - although he said the same thing before last weekend's First Market Bank Invitational, at which his squad finished 17th out of 20.

Cornell midfielder John Glynn won the opening faceoff, weaved through the Penn defense and found teammate Ryan Hurley wide open in front of the net. Hurley shot and scored. The game may as well have been over. Cornell hung eight consecutive goals on the Quakers, holding them scoreless for the first 40 minutes of the game en route to a 13-5 victory.

If there were ever a time when one person could impact an entire weekend of softball, this was it. Quakers freshman pitcher Jessie Lupardus left her mark on the weekend as Penn hosted a pair of doubleheaders against Yale and Brown. Going in with the lowest earned run average in all of Division-I softball (0.

After 35 hours of discussions and debate this past weekend, the Student Activities Council is increasing its funding for student groups. For the first time since 2000, SAC has updated its funding policies and guidelines in time for its annual budget allocations process for the 2008-2009 school year.

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.

They used to hold parties in the basement of the ARCH, plastering newspapers over the windows to protect the anonymity of the attendees. But for the current Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender community on campus, these carefully guarded gatherings are a thing of the past.

Films at this year's Greater Philadelphia Student Film Festival ranged from the frivolous and fun ballad of a hot air balloon spy to the weighty and grave story of a transsexual Drexel student switching genders. About 540 people attended the third-annual festival last Friday, where students from Penn, Drexel and University of the Arts took away the majority of the awards.

Harvard Law School is easing the burden of taking public service jobs with a new tuition plan, a move experts and students applaud but say could go further. Under the new plan, the law school will pay the third year of tuition for future students who commit to work in public service for five years following graduation, Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan announced last week.

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.

As the Philadelphia School District discusses a partnership with Penn and Drexel, University officials need to take the community's needs into account. The plan would involve the transformation of University City High into a combination neighborhood-and-magnet school.

Today marks the beginning of SCUE's annual Education Week. For two decades, students have used this week as a time to reflect beyond requirements and recruiting, deciding for themselves what it means to be an active learner at Penn. During a semester in France, I saw my classmates physically barricade their university for four weeks: occupying the buildings, shutting down debate and scuffling with riot police to show their dissatisfaction with the government's university reform proposal.

For some, April Fools' Day has come early -- despite the "Obama" eggs scattered around campus and the flyers posted on Locust Walk saying otherwise, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama will not be speaking at Irvine Auditorium tomorrow night.