A season of tempests and droughts. That was the volatile nature of Penn Women’s Soccer’s often-electrifying, often-frustrating 2015 campaign.

The program's greatest team in recent memory lost NCAA All-Americans Sam Mattis and Tommy Awad — as well as other star athletes — but perhaps the most notable loss came from the coaching staff that vaulted the team up to its relative success on the Ivy League and national stages in 2016. 

Success is just a small part of why we cover Penn’s teams, as are the teams themselves. More importantly than the teams, we cover the athletes.

Penn athletics is seemingly teeming with wunderkinds. Just about every team seems to have their own underclassmen superstar.

I’ve had the privilege of writing for the Daily Pennsylvanian for two full years now, and one particular date is seared into my brain: November 7, 2015. That particular day, undoubtedly, was the most entertaining of my Penn career thus far.

For most of Penn’s undergraduate population, the end of the final exam period signals the time for kicking back, relaxing and fondly looking back at the previous year. But for a very lucky, very small fraction of the student body, the onset of summer simply means business as usual. Playing on a varsity spring sport inherently carries the risk of playing past the school year’s conclusion, and 2016 was no exception.

As the country prepares for the Rio Olympics later this summer, an unprecedented delegation from Penn fought for places on the United States’ swimming roster. 14 Quakers flew to Omaha, Neb.

What do you do when you can’t play the sport you love? Turn your fighting energy towards a different arena: the business world. On a hiatus from the game of tennis, 29 year-old Maria Sharapova has chosen to attend Harvard Business School for a two-week summer program.

As the country prepares for the Rio Olympics later this summer, an unprecedented delegation from Penn is in currently trying to fight for places on the United States’ swimming roster.

The women’s soccer program just released their schedule for the 2016 season, but you’d be forgiven if you thought they posted the wrong one. This season’s list of fixtures looks remarkably similar to last season’s, head coach Nicole Van Dyke’s first in charge of the Red and Blue.

Two of the Red and Blue's women’s lacrosse players were honored by Inside Lacrosse this week as part of its year-long awards recognition. Senior attack Nina Corcoran and freshman defender Katy Junior received awards after being named on the All-ILWomen team and the All-Rookie team, respectively.

When Penn women's basketball coach Mike McLaughlin had to hire a new assistant coach, he didn't have to look far.

The Red and Blue’s field hockey team had a bittersweet 2015. After barreling through nationally ranked opponents weekly, the Quakers seemed poised to take back the Ivy League championship that had eluded them since 2004. However, the season finale against Princeton did not feature the end result that the team wanted.

As spring semester ended and students prepared to embark on their various summer journeys, one women’s soccer player had reason to be especially excited. Erica Higa, a sophomore midfielder for the Red and Blue, traveled to Rwanda alongside fellow Penn Athletics representative coach Kerry Major Carr of women’s volleyball and around ten other Penn students and faculty as part of the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s Rwanda Gashora Program. The program was created to explore the possibilities of using solar energy and information communication technology in low-resource communities in developing countries.

On Saturday, No.7 Penn women’s lacrosse ended one of its best seasons in program history with an 8-4 loss to unseeded Penn State.

Now that all of the times and marks have been recorded for the regular season, berths for the postseason have been confirmed — 16 track and field stars will be representing the Red and Blue in the first round of postseason meets, the NCAA East Prelims. 

Classes may have ended, but some students are facing finals of a very different variety. With the season coming to a close, Penn rowing has been competing in a host of monumentally important events, notching impressive results along the way.