Back on the Gridiron

The Penn football team was back on the field for the first time Saturday night after finishing last season as the only Division I football team without a loss.

The team has suffered substantial losses, however, from last season's Ivy League champion squad.

Penn's entire starting offensive line will be graduating later this spring, along with the Red and Blue's starting quarterback for the past two seasons, Ivy League Player of the Year, Mike Mitchell.

The defensive squad has also had some rather notable losses, namely All-Ivy linebacker Steve Lhotak.

"We have some big shoes to fill," sophomore defensive back Michael Johns said. "I know I'm looking forward to it."

It was of little surprise that the Penn offense showed a good amount of rust during its scrimmage against the defensive unit.

With players platooning at various positions, the offense's timing simply had not yet been found -- a normal problem for spring practices.

"We play a lot of kids and we're just trying to get continuity from one group to the next," defensive coordinator Ray Priore said. "Learning to play together is a difficult thing to do and I'd say they did a good job."

In the first half of the mock game, the defense managed to score more touchdowns than the offense, as sophomore Casey Edgar returned a fumble to the end zone for the lone touchdown of the first half.

The offense did begin to click in the second half, however. The Quakers had several good-looking drives that resulted in points after the intermission.

The Quakers offense struggled most notably with its passing attack. With the loss of Mitchell and the limited playing time of the more experienced wide receivers like junior Dan Castles, the Red and Blue defense seemed to have its way through the air.

"Defensively, I think our strength is in the secondary," Priore said. "We are returning a lot of speed and I think that really helped us."

The Quakers know that this is just a preseason scrimmage and there is still a long road ahead as they begin to prepare for the upcoming season.

The team is "not going to walk away too inflated about how good we may think we may be," Priore said. "We'll keep everyone very level-headed going into the off-season."

One thing that the Red and Blue did not have to concern themselves with were any serious injuries to any of their players.

"The most important thing in a game like this is that no one gets hurt," Priore said. "That's the number one thing that we all strive for, to walk away healthy."

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