After a slow start to Ivy League play, Penn women’s soccer is preparing itself for a redeeming road trip up to Columbia on Friday.

Penn field hockey rode another exceptional Alexa Hoover performance to its eighth win of the season, toppling Lafayette, 5-0, in a midweek non-conference matchup at Vagelos Field.

Many Penn students will be relaxing at home this weekend for fall break, but the volleyball players will be on campus, and they certainly won't be resting.

For Penn field hockey, the plan is pretty simple: find a way to win Ivy contests, even when those results don’t come easy. And sitting on a 7-1 record with two wins in conference, that is exactly what it has done.

For the past three years, Penn cross country has shown consistent signs of improvement but has been unable, as of yet, to put it all together. This year, though, the Quakers are coming temptingly close to doing just that.

Sunday saw the conclusion of an excellent showing for Penn Women’s Tennis at the Cissie Leary Invitational Women’s tennis tournament, a tournament hosted on Penn’s very own campus this past weekend.

On a brisk Monday night at Rhodes Field, the Quakers played nearly flawless soccer. From a statistical standpoint, Penn dominated the box score in every column except the one that mattered most: the final score.

On a frigid, rain-swept night, 110 minutes of play were not enough to separate Penn women’s soccer and Cornell, who battled to a 0-0 double overtime draw.

Make it seven in a row for Penn field hockey. Entering their match on Saturday on a six-game winning streak, the Quakers went head-to-head with Ivy League opponent Harvard up in Cambridge, Mass., and came out on top, 2-1, in an intense overtime contest. The first half proved to be challenging for the Red and Blue (7-1, 2-0 Ivy) as they were initially forced onto the defensive.

Rewind to four weeks ago.  It was a clear late-August day and Sasha Stephens had just stepped onto Rhodes Field clad in Red and Blue for the first time.

Unlike last year, Penn volleyball coach Kerry Carr has the veteran firepower needed to keep the team from being reliant on freshmen.

An undefeated women’s soccer team will take to Rhodes Field this Friday, one of two squads yet to post a loss in Division I.

As Penn field hockey has demonstrated this year, having star players is nice, but it takes a full team to win.

This weekend, Penn’s cross country will look to divide and conquer.

Facing the defending champions is always a challenge. Facing the defending champions along with the team that just upset them is a nightmare. Such is the schedule for Penn volleyball, who travel Friday to Leede Arena in Hanover, N.H., to battle a hot Dartmouth side, followed by a Saturday trip the Malkin Athletic Center in Cambridge, Mass., to face the 2014 Ivy League victors, Harvard. The Quakers (7-6, 1-0 Ivy)record seem to be in good standing and could be ready for this challenge, coming off of a three-game winning streak, including a 3-1 triumph at Princeton last Friday and a shutout of NJIT on the roadreordered the following day. deleted “Having played only one league game and split the rest, Penn is sitting on a 7-6 record overall.” Despite its extensive non-conferencehyphen schedule, coach Kerry Carr was not concerned about the team’s fatigue going into the weekend's strenuous doubleheader. “I got a lot of different players experience in the preseason, so I feel like we're rested going into the Ivy League,” she said. One of the standout players for Penn this past weekend was senior captain Alexis Genske, who recorded 14 kills and 14 digs against the Tigers and had another 12 kills with fourspelled out digs against the Highlanders. “I think our whole team played really steady, which made it easy to be more aggressive on plays [I] might not normally take a risk on, so that definitely gave me the confidence to swing harder,” Genske said.  “Also, passing and defensively, we were communicating really well, so I knew which balls my teammates were taking, and which ones were my responsibility.” The Red and Blue will certainly need their strength when they take on the Big Green, who narrowly squeezed past the Crimson in a dramatic five-setter last Friday.

Tear, strain, break, and fracture. In the midst of a season packed with daily practices and arduous games, injuries are an unfortunate and inevitable part of all sports. For Penn women's soccer, injuries are the ill-fated reality with which they must deal.

After an average start to the season dotted with wins and losses, the Quakers hit their stride on its first weekend of league play.