Fall is a time of high school homecomings, a time for many to see old faces and make new friends.
The Penn men's cross country team is no exception. Despite the fact that more than half the team consists of freshmen, spirit is nonetheless very strong in the Quakers' camp.
"Our greatest strength right now is our excitement," Penn senior Matt Gioffre said. "You could even call it `youthful exuberance.'"
"[The freshmen] put an extra charge into us, too."
The Quakers' first major competition of the cross-country season, the Philly Classic, is on Saturday, on home turf. Penn ran at the Fordham Invitational in early September, but the Quakers treated that race as little more than a training run.
The Philly Classic will be held at Belmont Plateau, just across the Schuylkill River.
The course is more than familiar to the Red and Blue, since they practice there frequently.
"That makes it mentally easier to run, since there are no surprises for us," Gioffre said. "It's a very hard course, but we can run faster than others might since we know what's coming next."
"It's a very hilly course, and can be very intimidating to those who don't know it," Penn coach Charlie Powell said. "But we do train on it. The key is that you have to keep focus at all times in a race on this course. Focus and mental toughness mean more than pure speed in a race like this one."
The freshmen runners have trained at Belmont Plateau, but have yet to race there.
"There is just a whole lot to find out, a lot of questions to be answered as to how [the freshmen] react to competition," Powell said. "They're a very talented group, but very inexperienced. Sometimes talent and enthusiasm overcome inexperience, but sometimes not."
Though Penn's freshmen are eager to prove themselves at the college level, Powell warned that in a "quintessential team sport" like cross country, the race is not actually the main concern right now.
"We have a lot of individual short-term goals for people to accomplish in this race, but the main concern for our sport is the team. One superstar can only do so much, since what matters for us is our top five scores.
"Right now we are not practicing and training for this race, but for what's at the end, the championships, to get us there in great shape. Where we will be a month or so from now is what is on our minds right now."
The Quakers are going up against some stiff opposition this weekend; Villanova and La Salle are particular concerns since their runners are equally familiar with the Belmont Plateau course. Dusquesne, West Chester and Monmouth round out the six-team field.
According to Gioffre, returning runners are excited to race again at Belmont.
"It's a lot of fun to run with people we see all the time," he said. "And the rest of the track team has a barbeque with us after the race. That gives us a lot of pride in the program."
Billy Moore, Penn junior and member of the track team, is looking forward to the party too.
"It's like having family standing behind each other for us to come out and support cross country," Moore said.
Gioffre and Moore both called the course "spectator friendly," because it has a large open field overlooking the first, third and fifth miles of the five-mile race.
The women's cross country teams compete at 3p.m., and the men start at 3:45p.m.
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