This weekend, a number of winter sports teams wrap up their seasons with Ivy League championships. While women's swimming and men's squash finished up last week, their opposite-gender counterparts along with gymnastics and indoor track and field all compete this weekend for postseason glory.
With just a few weeks left before the inaugural Ivy League Tournament for both men's and women's basketball, both of Penn's squads will have meaningful games to come.
The Quakers ended the meet with their second best score of the year at 193.425, showing some of their best performances so far this season. They came away with a victory against ECAC rival William and Mary, but Kentucky took home first place.
“First time I played her was when we were both nine years old,” Reeham Salah recalled. “We both just started getting into squash, so I won that match in three games, but it was tight from the beginning.” That’s a pretty good way of describing the rivalry between Penn’s Salah and Harvard’s Sabrina Sobhy.
Over the past month, the Quakers have been tearing up the indoor circuit in the six meets they have competed in since winter break. Only half of those competitions had team scoring, but a quick look at the individual results shows a Red and Blue side that has been dominant in multiple areas.
So close. Penn women's swimming and diving was just inches away from getting their best finish ever at the Ivy League Championships last weekend, but ultimately finished fourth with 962 points.
So close. Penn women's swimming and diving was just inches away from getting their best finish ever at the Ivy League Championships last weekend, but ultimately finished fourth with 962 points.
With just a few weeks left before the inaugural Ivy League Tournament for both men's and women's basketball, both of Penn's squads will have meaningful games to come.
The Quakers ended the meet with their second best score of the year at 193.425, showing some of their best performances so far this season. They came away with a victory against ECAC rival William and Mary, but Kentucky took home first place.
BOSTON — It wasn’t the end result they wanted, but things ended on a good note nonetheless. Competing at the CSA team championships this past weekend, Penn men’s squash secured a seventh-place finish, with a 7-2 win over Yale in their final match of the season.
Kicking things off on the road at Newark, Delaware this past Saturday, the No. 11 Quakers pulled out a tight 9-7 victory over a strong Delaware team. During the run of play, two Penn players manage to set career-highs for themselves en route to picking up the team’s first win of the season.
It’ll be a long bus ride home for Penn women’s basketball. Across sports as a whole, many athletes hate losing more than they like winning, and that holds especially true at the elite level. And that’s exactly why this weekend isn’t as bad as it seems.
Penn women’s basketball split their second Ivy League road trip doubleheader with a win at Brown followed by their first conference loss at the hands of Yale. Despite the 61-48 defeat, the Quakers (15-7, 8-1 Ivy) still remain in sole possession of first place in the league. But that doesn’t mean they played first-place basketball this weekend.
In what was arguably Penn women’s basketball’s wildest game since last year’s epic Ivy title-clinching win at Princeton, the Quakers battled back to overcome a 16-point first-quarter deficit and edge a feisty Brown squad, 71-68, to keep their dreams of Ancient Eight perfection alive. Here are our biggest takeaways from the epic contest:
One player Penn could not have lived without at Brown was junior Michelle Nwokedi. The star forward kept her team in the game all night, scoring 21 points and giving five assists in the process. It was her composure in the second and third quarters of the contest that enabled the Quakers to slowly carve out Brown’s large lead.
This Saturday, both Penn lacrosse teams will open their 2017 campaigns. For the women, this will be first test of their No. 11 preseason ranking in this year’s ILWCA poll. As has been the case in the past three years, the Quakers will start off against Delaware, in what has been a notably close rivalry of late.
Still undefeated in the league, the Quakers (14-6, 7-0 Ivy) are clear favorites to take another pair of wins on Friday and Saturday, but they can ill afford to take their eyes of the ball. In Brown (14-7, 5-3) they face what some might call a sleeper team, currently fourth in the league and playing some solid basketball.
After a two-week hiatus from competition, Penn women’s tennis is itching to get back on the court. This weekend will take the Quakers (1-2) south to face Virginia on Saturday and Old Dominion on Sunday.
This Sunday, Penn gymnastics will travel to College Park, Maryland to compete in its third consecutive quad meet of the season. The Quakers will face off against Maryland, Kentucky, and William and Mary. With only a week separating the Red and Blue from the Ivy Classic, this weekend’s tournament will be crucial for Penn to assure confidence in the lineup before the ultra-important conference meet.
The finale of the squash season is upon us as No. 8 Penn prepares for the team championships this weekend. The Quakers will be challenged right off the bat with a first round match Friday against No. 1 Trinity, who defeated Penn 8-1 in January.
The Quakers set their sights on the NCAA National Championship, and were seeded at No. 7 for the tournament. Wagner and Towson were the first two challengers, and the Red and Blue took care of them easily by scores of 17-7 and 12-4, respectively. The Quakers were then faced with Penn State, a competitor that coach Corbett felt the team had a “great opportunity” to defeat. Unfortunately, the offense that had been so prolific throughout the year had an off day, and they fell by a score of 8-4.
When you fight your way to a national quarterfinal game like Penn women's lacrosse did last year, well, it’s no wonder that the best players come from far and wide to don the Red and Blue. And though the roster lost some big names after graduation last May, the arrival of such an impressive class of 2020 seems to be a harbinger of a new era of lacrosse excellence here at Franklin Field.
For the Quakers, there is a good number of championships to be won. As they enter this newest campaign, the Red and Blue have their eyes on three pieces of silverware: an NCAA title, an Ivy League title and an Ivy League Tournament trophy.
Solutions by The State News
