M. Track wins Heps title with 100m sweep

On May 5, for the first time in four years, the Penn men's track team won the Outdoor Heptagonal Championship.

And it's not too difficult to pinpoint exactly how and when the Quakers ended Princeton's three-year stranglehold on the title.

Oh, sure, a Sam Burley win in the '00 meters helped. As did Brian Kovalsky's win in the 10,000 and Tuan Wreh's win in the triple jump. And a 1-2 finish by Mike Aguilar and Jared Shoemaker in the 110 hurdles certainly gave the Quakers momentum.

But the 100-meter dash changed everything.

The Penn trio of Gene Sun, Laethe Coleman and Stephen Faulk swept the top three places in the 100.

Yes, that's right. They went 1-2-3. Sun won in 10.6' seconds, Coleman was second in 10.75 and Faulk finished third in 10.77.

"Everybody was just like, Oh my god, they did it,'" Penn coach Charlie Powell said.

The momentum shift was strangely audible.

"After that, the whole stadium was basically silent," Coleman said. "All you could hear was the Penn fans chanting."

The 100-meter sweep didn't clinch the title for the Quakers, but the 24 points they garnered in the event more than accounted for the the Red and Blue's margin of victory. Penn, with 136.5 points, finished 19.5 points ahead of second-place Princeton. Cornell was third with 95 points.

"It's a great feeling to win," Wreh said. "We were hungry, determined, and everybody did what they had to do."

Everybody included Burley and Kovalsky, who both outkicked the field in their victories. Burley switched into fifth gear in the last 150 meters of his '00, while Kovalsky, in his first 10,000-meter race in two years, ran an electric 5'-second final lap.

Everybody included Aguilar and Shoemaker, who brought Penn back to within striking distance from 30-something points down with their combined 1' points in the high hurdles.

Everybody also included Aaron Prokopec, who tore a groin muscle but still managed to score a point for the Quakers by placing sixth in the pole vault.

With the Outdoor Heps win, Penn avenged a 34-point loss to Princeton at Indoor Heps in late February. And the Quakers did it in enemy territory -- Old Nassau.

"That makes it doubly nice," Powell said.

Penn will be back at Princeton this weekend -- for the third time in three weeks. The Quakers ran at the Princeton Invitational last weekend, and the 92-team IC4A Championships will be held at Princeton this weekend.

The IC4As are more individually oriented than Heps, but there is team scoring. The Quakers finished 10th at Outdoor IC4As last year and 43rd at Indoor IC4As in March.

More than 20 Penn athletes qualified for IC4As, including high jumper Adam Chubb, whose second place jump of 7'2.5" at Heps is the 13th-best in the nation this year.

Burley and Wreh also qualified. Burley won the '00 at the Princeton Invite in 1:4'.30 -- 1'th-fastest in the nation. Wreh, an IC4A champion last year, had a personal-best and 1'th-best-in-the-nation triple jump of 52'4.5" last weekend.

Chubb, Burley and Wreh are all in position to qualify for Nationals. At least 17, and possibly as many as 19 or 20, athletes qualify in each event.

Sun, Coleman and Faulk, meanwhile, don't have NCAA-qualifying times, but they will compete in IC4As.

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