Dealing with a tragedy

With the sports world still temporarily on hold due to Tuesday's tragic events, universities around the nation are faced with some tough decisions.

Should schools postpone games to pay homage to all those lost, or should they keep games on the schedule to try to return to a regular routine?

Penn has postponed all its games the past two days. And while the weekend schedule is still up in the air, all sports teams returned to practice yesterday.

Penn football coach Al Bagnoli knows there's no easy way to handle the situation.

"You can make a case that it's a tragic time in history and there needs to be a little bit of respect to that, or you can make the case you want to try to get back to normalcy as quick as you can," Bagnoli said. "I think that both arguments are correct. So whatever the institution hands down is the right move and is what we'll go by."

Penn, however, has yet to make a decision on whether the football team's season-opener against Lehigh will be played. Most college football games around the country will be played as scheduled this weekend.

On the Ivy League front, Yale made the immediate decision to cancel all sporting events through Sunday, while in Dartmouth, all games are on as originally scheduled. Brown, which was supposed to travel to San Diego for its football opener, has canceled that game to avoid air travel.

The only major national conferences to cancel their weekend games were the ACC, Pac-10 and Big East. Thus, the Temple University-University of Connecticut game, scheduled for this Saturday at Franklin Field, will not be played.

The Penn football team, however, is anxious to get back on the field to try and forget those horrible images the Quakers saw on Tuesday.

"I don't think postponing or cancelling this game is going to do any good," Penn quarterback Gavin Hoffman said. "I think it's a good way for people to come together and sort of forget what happened for a couple of hours."

The football players, however, understandably had a little bit of trouble in practice yesterday. Many people in the Quakers football family worked in the World Trade Centers, including relatives and former players. Luckily, they were all able to get out of the building alive.

Getting on that football field the day after such a horrific occurrence was not an easy task, but the Quakers, for the most part, were able to come together and deal with it.

"I think we're surviving. It wasn't a great practice, but it wasn't an awful practice," Bagnoli said. "Under the circumstances, it's probably what I thought we'd have. We had some lapses. We had moments that were quality, and other moments that looked like they were very distracted and distant."

The Quakers head coach also noted that tossing around the pigskin could be the best medicine.

"We're going to try to use it as a positive," Bagnoli said. "Maybe this is a two-hour window to take their minds off things that are really troubling them, and maybe let some of their anxiety out."

The Penn football team lost a day of practice, but other squads were effected to a greater degree.

The Penn field hockey team was supposed to play its third game of the season last night against Villanova, but that game was cancelled. The Quakers held a practice, preceded by a moment of silence.

"Personally, I think you pay your respects and then move on," Penn coach Val Cloud said. "You can't grieve forever."

Penn's volleyball team had a slew of games cancelled. Tuesday's game against Temple was of course, not played, and the Quakers' trip to California this weekend will be postponed.

"I think that's for a lot of logical reasons," Penn coach Kerry Major said. "It would be total chaos. We don't even want to be a part of the whole thing. Airplanes need to be used for emergencies instead."

There is no word yet on the status of the rest of the Quakers' sports teams. Penn athletic director Steve Bilsky declined to comment, but said that decisions on the weekend's activities would be made today.

For most part, however, athletics have taken a backseat.

As Major said, "I think the games seem a little less important this week."

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