M. Track looks to devour competition

This weekend, the big dogs will eat. Or the big Quakers, to be more precise. After feasting on William and Mary, Virginia Commonwealth and Mount St. Mary's, the Penn men's track team heads north to Boston over the weekend to compete in the Terrier Classic. The Quakers finished second at the Navy Invitational last weekend, trailing only the Midshipmen, as they came home with first-place finishes in six individual events, as well as second place in the 4x400 and distance medley relays. "We went out there and did what we wanted to do," Penn coach Charlie Powell said. "We are just playing around with it right now. In the next weeks, we will figure out what kind of team we have." The Terrier Classic will pit the Red and Blue against more than 30 teams. "It is one of the biggest invitationals in the country," Powell said. "We do not concentrate on any one team. We concentrate on ourselves at all times. "The key thing is that there will be a lot of guys who are post-collegians, Olympic-quality type guys.... [There] should be some great races." The Quakers will bring a squad loaded with experience and depth, which they displayed with the variety in their victories at Navy On the field side, freshman Peter Cochran took first place in the long jump with a jump of 6.81m, finishing ahead of two other Penn jumpers in the process. "He had a very nice meet," Powell said. "He's a tough hard-working kid who loves to get out there and compete." Sophomore Neal Wojdowski took the top spot in the pole vault with a height of 4.65m, with junior Zack Suttile and sophomore Jesse Shoemaker following not far behind, tying for a fifth-place finish. Wojodowski "was one of the top kids in the east last year," Powell said. "He's a great athlete." On the track, co-captain Brian Abram finished in his typical fashion, leaving all opponents in his dust in the 400m run with a time of 49.13 seconds. Senior Jared Shoemaker burned his opponents in the 55m hurdles, and junior Chris Edmonds did the same in the 500m run, an event he did not even run at Penn's previous invitational at Princeton. "That is what coaching is all about," Powell said of the choice to run Edmonds. "There's an art to coaching as well as a science." In that case, Powell will have to bring his paintbrush to Boston, as many of his coaching decisions will be game-time ones -- the squad has been battling a case of the flu. Flu or no flu, Powell has his priorities straight. "Our sport is quite unique in the fact that it rests on what happens at the end of the season, not in the beginning," Powell said. "You just pick your spots and bang them when you can. Fun things can happen in one or two places, so we will just see if they do."

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