Quaker Meeting House (QMH) has some thoughts after taking a break in the week after Relays. "Break" being a relative term in the biz, especially this time of year…
*Back in 2016, Tom Awad absolutely electrified the Penn Relays crowd when he made up a massive deficit in the final 200 meters to give the Penn men's track team a win in the 4xMile relay. It remains one of the coolest things QMH has seen in his nearly (gulp) 20 years in University City.
You can watch it here; fast-forward to about the 3:30 mark.
On Sunday afternoon at Princeton's Weaver Stadium, senior
Aliya Garozzo gave the women's team its indelible memory.
The women entered the final race of the day, the 4x400 relay, needing to beat Princeton to win the team title. As you might expect, the four-lap race had plenty of ups and downs—the Tigers were well in front at the first handoff,
Jocelyn Niemiec essentially made up that deficit in the second leg, and then the Quakers briefly took the lead in the third leg before Princeton went back in front and made its final handoff about 10 meters ahead of Penn. That lead appeared only to grow on the back stretch, and as Garozzo and her Tigers counterpart hit the final turn QMH remembers thinking "this is too much, there's no way Aliya can make this up."
Boy, was QMH wrong.
The camera angle does not do justice to Garozzo's final 200. What you can see is that by the time the two racers came out of the turn and onto the final stretch Garozzo was essentially level, and as soon as they hit the final straightaway she just blew right past the Tigers runner. Even watching it now, QMH is nearly moved to tears. What a gutsy, incredible kick.
The kicker to all this, of course, is that the announcers were completely clueless as to the situation. As you hear early on, they talk about how all Princeton needs is to finish one place behind Penn to clinch the team title. (Wrong). Then, literally as Garozzo is laying down her ferocious final 100 the guy says "Penn will win the race, Princeton will win the meet." (Again, wrong.) It wasn't until the team engulfed Garozzo in celebration that the announcers were like "wait a minute…maybe we got our math wrong."
Um…yeah, you did. Penn finished with 184.5 points, Princeton with 184.0.
In a meet of this size, with so many events, where do you go to point out such a miniscule margin? QMH will give you a seemingly innocuous field event from Saturday.
In the women's pole vault back on the first day, three athletes—Dartmouth's Maya Grudman, Princeton's SJ Cohen, and Penn's
Meghan Hart—topped out at 12 feet 8.25 inches. However, while Hart and Grudman cleared that height on their first attempts, Cohen needed two tries. So when the final standings were set, Grudman and Hart were declared tied for sixth place and got their teams 0.5 points. Cohen was declared eighth and did not score. Yup, it was
that close.
(One of the Ivy League's message board denizens also pointed to the high jump on Sunday, where an extra miss bumped Princeton's scorer from third to fourth, giving her four points instead of six. Again, a razor-thin margin for error. In a conversation with QMH a few days later, Coach Dolan pointed to the 4x800 relay, which preceded the 4x400 and was Sunday's penultimate race. In that relay, Cornell's Katja Jackson ran down Princeton's Margaret Liebich in the final stretch and crossed the finish line a mere 0.29 seconds ahead of her Tigers counterpart. That bumped Princeton from second to third, giving them six points instead of eight. Say it with me...
every point counts!)
The women have been making a habit of these fantastic finishes. This was actually a repeat of Indoor Heps, where the women won the final relay to keep Princeton at bay by six points. In 2019, the Quakers needed wins in the final two relays—the 4x800 and the 4x400—to clinch. Penn women's track, not for the faint of heart!
*QMH was a little miffed when Harvard's Maia Ramsden was named the Outstanding Women's Track Performer at Heps. Don't get him wrong, Ramsden pulled off an incredible double on Sunday, winning the 1,500 and the 5,000 less than three hours apart and breaking the Heps record both times. But look at the Sunday Garozzo put together—wins in the 100 and 400 hurdles, in the process resetting her program standard in the latter, and then that final 4x400 lap to quite literally run down victory from the jaws of defeat. Talk about a mic drop to her career. She had to at least get consideration, right?
*Honestly, it was hard to keep up with all the success on the track for awhile there on Sunday. In particular, from 1:40 p.m. (when
Shane Gardner won the men's 110-meter hurdles) until 3:10 (when Aliya won the 400 hurdles) Penn athletes won seven races. Sandwich those between
Olivia Morganti's win in the steeplechase at 12:45, and
Isabella Whittaker leading a 1-2-3 sweep in the 200 at 3:40 p.m., and bookend everything with wins in the women's 4x100 and 4x400 relays, and you have yourself a
day.
*While we're talking track & field…since QMH took a self-imposed sabbatical last week, he feels compelled to recap the Relays as well.
First off, as the Relays continues to emerge from its post-COVID malaise, the crowds are starting to come back. Nearly 100,000 folks passed through the gates over the weekend. The weather certainly helped—Friday, in particular, was perfect—but it was great to see the venue bumping like the pre-pandemic days.
From a Penn perspective, the weekend had several highlights. Both the men's and women's teams saw program records broken across the weekend, the men in the 4x400 and 4x800 relays and the women in the sprint medley relay—which they ran instead of the 4x100—the 4x400, and from
Olivia Morganti in the steeplechase on Thursday night.
Morganti not only shaved two seconds off her previous PR and school record in the steeplechase; she also won the race. In doing so, she became the first Penn woman to win an individual championship in a track event at the Relays—prior to her, the program had individual winners in the heptathlon (Frances Childs in 1988, Shani Boston in 2004, Noel Jancewicz in 2014) and in the high jump (Anna Peyton Malizia in 2019).
A nice bookend came on Saturday afternoon when
James Rhoads won the men's high jump championship. The conditions weren't ideal for PRs or program records, but Rhoads made history with his win—the last time a Penn athlete won the pole vault at Relays was 1958. Shoutout also to
Scott Toney who finished second in the event.
*In a quiet moment over the weekend, the Lois S. Leitner Head Coach of Women's Lacrosse,
Karin Corbett, couldn't help but note the symmetry between last season and this season in her program's budding rivalry with Yale. Last year? Yale had big expectations, got boat-raced by the Quakers during the regular season on Franklin Field (16-6) as the program celebrated Alumni Day, then gave up a late regulation goal in the Ivy League Tournament final on Penn's home field and lost in overtime.
Welp, this year Penn was the unanimous preseason favorite in the league. The Quakers went to New Haven in early April and, as the Bulldogs celebrated
their Alumni Day (coincidence?), got put on a running clock in the third quarter en route to a 16-8 loss. The teams then met again Sunday in the ILT final, and in one of those notable quirks that only QMH seems to love the Quakers lost a game in which they never trailed.
This time it was Yale scoring late in regulation, the Bulldogs needing to go two-thirds the length of the field in 22.2 seconds and doing it in 17. That tied things at 9-9, the first time the teams had been level since 0-0, and it fully erased what had been 6-1 and 9-5 Penn leads—the latter with less than nine minutes to play in regulation. Overall, a stunning heartbreaker that only the most grizzled of spectators (like QMH) could comprehend.
It tarnished some incredible performances. Junior
Anna Brandt broke the tournament record for goals in a game in Friday's semifinal against Princeton—only to see it tied later that night by Yale's Jenna Collignon—and then both Brandt and Collignon scored four times in the final to tie for the tournament record for goals across a weekend (12). Of course, who had the best goal? Let's give the win to Anna.
Junior
Erika Chung had six assists against the Tigers and nine on the weekend, both new ILT standards.
Izzy Rohr, fresh off earning her second straight Ivy League Defender of the Year honor, had three caused turnovers in both games. And how about
Niki Miles on Friday night? She pulled down 14 draw controls, a program record. The senior needs three to reach 100 for the season, something that hasn't been accomplished since 2018.
*One of the highlights of the women's lacrosse experience, honestly, was listening to Justin Gallanty call all three games in New Haven for ESPN+. What a great job he did, and QMH felt compelled to let him know after Penn's games both Friday and Sunday. The Quakers have been blessed the last few weeks with top-notch calls—QMH was pleasantly surprised by Matt Corsetti on the Dartmouth play-by-play in the regular-season finale—and this weekend they get one of the best, of course, the always affable Dan Fritz!
*As expected, despite the loss the women had the thrill of seeing their name come up on the NCAA's selection show later that night. (And it
is a thrill, ask any student-athlete who's ever gotten to experience it here.) Even better, the Quakers got a top eight seed and will be home this weekend hosting Richmond, Duke and Loyola (Md.). Friday's schedule has Penn playing the Spiders at 1 p.m., then Duke and Loyola meeting at 4 p.m., with the winners moving on to Sunday's second-round game at 1 p.m. All of them will take place on Franklin Field, which is online for one more weekend before Commencement activities move in.
*No such luck for men's lacrosse, which for the second straight year appears to be the first team out. The Quakers gave themselves a lifeline on Friday with a stunning, 13-9 win over top-seeded Cornell in the Ivy League Tournament semis, but for the second time in two weeks the Red and Blue fell to Princeton, this time 18-11 in the final.
The general consensus is that Michigan kept Penn out; the Wolverines were the fourth seed in the Big Ten Tournament, needed to win it to get the automatic bid, then did just that by steamrolling Johns Hopkins and Penn State (the latter by a 16-4 score). Somehow, losing by 12 goals in their final wasn't enough to keep the Nittany Lions out of the NCAA field, as they got the final at-large spot ahead of Penn. Power 5 bias? Nah.
*OK, so if you're a Penn baseball fan you're cheering for Harvard this weekend. At least for one game.
Things were looking real bad for Penn as folks woke up Saturday morning. The Quakers had lost to Dartmouth the day before. Lost, heck…they'd been routed, 12-3. Meanwhile, Princeton was beating Columbia and clinching a spot in the Ivy League Tournament. At that point, Penn was 9-10, Cornell, meanwhile, was 10-8 and starting a series with last-place Brown.
So what happened? Well, Penn dropped 40 runs on the Big Green, 16 in Game 1 and 24 in a Game 2 that had to be shortened due to darkness. Meanwhile, in Providence, those basement-dwelling Bears unloaded on Cornell in Game 1, 11-2, then came back with an extra-inning, 13-12 victory in Game 2. Thus, the Quakers and Big Red went to bed Saturday night tied in the loss column, Penn done for the weekend and Cornell needing to win on Sunday to keep pace (which they did, 9-4). The weekend ended with the two teams done for the season and tied for third in the standings at 11-10.
So all that's left is the Harvard-Yale series, taking place this Saturday and Sunday in New Haven. The Bulldogs are 9-9, the Crimson 8-10. According to the Ivy League office, here are the potential Ivy League Tournament scenarios for Penn…
YALE SWEEP: Bulldogs (12-9) jump Penn (11-10) and Cornell (11-10) into third; the Big Red would then win the tiebreaker for the fourth seed over Penn, having beaten them in their series April 13-14.
YALE WINS TWO: Bulldogs (11-10) would finish tied with Penn and Cornell for third; the next tiebreaker is head-to-head among the three teams which would leave Cornell (4-2) and Penn (3-3) ahead of Yale (2-4).
HARVARD WINS TWO: Both the Crimson and Bulldogs finish 10-11, so Cornell get the 3 seed and Penn the 4 seed with better records (11-10).
HARVARD SWEEP: Crimson (11-10) would finish tied with Penn and Cornell for third; the next tiebreaker is head-to-head among the three teams which would leave Cornell (4-2) and Penn (3-3) ahead of Harvard (2-4).
Long story short: C'mon, Crimson!
*QMH was thrilled to see softball end the season with a doubleheader sweep on Saturday. It's been a trying season for the Quakers under first-year head coach
Christie Novatin—after taking 2 of 3 in the first Ivy series of the season, against Cornell, the Red and Blue dropped 16 conference games in a row. So how can you not be proud to see the women wake up last Saturday morning in Providence and put together two solid performances, and overcome some late-game drama to close out their campaign! That shows grit, man.
In particular, how about Game 1 on Saturday? The Quakers were down, 2-0, but scored three times in the sixth when
Brianna Brown singled home a run and then two more came across unearned. The Bears got the run back in the bottom of the seventh and had the winning run on third, but a foulout to left field sent the game to extra innings. In the eighth,
Megan Huang and Brown led off with singles, advanced to second and third on a sacrifice bunt, then scored on a
Dakota Farmer single. Farmer later scored, and that proved to be enough as
Payton Bean shook off her blown save in the seventh with a scoreless inning in the eighth. Again, gritty.
*Congratulations to head coach
Al Monte and the men's heavyweight rowing program. The Quakers had a nice result in Ithaca on Saturday, winning the Madeira Cup from Cornell for just the fourth time this century—the others coming in 2001, 2007 and 2018—but bringing home the Wray Cup (total points from the day's racing) for the first time since 1998. Add in sweeps across all boats against Holy Cross and Oregon State, and the crew has some nice momentum heading into Sprints a week from Sunday.
It's been quite a spring on the men's side of the boathouse. The lightweights have brought home five pieces of hardware this spring, the Varsity Eight winning the Dodge Cup (from Yale and Columbia), the Wood-Hammond Trophy (from Princeton) and the Callow Cup (from Navy). As a team, the Quakers have brought the Colgan Cup (total points in racing against the Bulldogs and Lions) and the 1919 Trophy (total points in racing with the Midshipmen). It's a little less than two weeks until Sprints and about a month until the IRA National Regatta, but this group looks poised to make some noise in the championship season.
*Congratulations to freshman
Esha Velaga and junior
Eileen Wang, who earned automatic bids into the NCAA Singles (Velaga) and Doubles (Velaga/Wang) Championships from May 20-25 in Stillwater, Okla. The announcement was made last week. In doing so, they make history as it's the first time the Quakers will be represented in both the Singles and Doubles Championship in the same season.
Velaga is just the sixth Penn woman to earn an NCAA singles bid and the first since Iuliia Bryzgalova (also as a freshman) in 2019. On the doubles front, Velaga and Wang are just the fourth duo in program history to earn an NCAA berth, the others coming in 2007 (Maria Anisimova and Ekaterina Kosminskaya), 2008 (Kosminskaya and Julia Koulbitskaya), and 2013 (Sol Eskenazi and Sonya Latycheva).
Velaga also became the fifth player in program history to sweep Ivy League Player and Rookie of the Year awards in her freshman season, joining an elite group that started with current head coach
Sanela Kunovac (2001) and includes Kosminskaya (2007), Hsu (2011) and Bryzgalova (2019). If you're thinking to yourself
oh, five Penn women have done it, must not be as rare as it would seem...actually, it IS as rare as it would seem. Besides those five, only one other player across the other seven programs has pulled it off. In other words, quite a year for the freshman sensation!
#FightOnPenn
