Football twins tap unique Powers

Having spent the past 20 years in lockstep, defensive backs Josh and Nate Powers have one cardinal rule: Never pursue the same woman.

Perhaps that's because, as twins, they've already demonstrated the mischief they can cause when girls can't tell them apart.

And even then, they found a crafty way around their number-one directive. In high school, the brothers dated identical twins.

"My mom loved it," Josh said.

The Powers are one of a handful of twin pairs to don the red and blue on a varsity team.

They've been on the same football team since fourth grade - and have also dabbled in basketball and track together.

"For football, it was just something we had a passion for," Josh said. "We thought we were going to run track for a while, but we made a joint decision that we were going to do football."

They claim they don't base decisions off each other - "It just happens that we like the same exact stuff," Nate said - but their chosen paths are eerily similar.

Last spring, Nate - who (like his brother, of course) is in Wharton with an undecided concentration - was unsure of which classes to take. Little did he know that Josh had already mapped out both their course plans. They wound up with identical schedules.

"It just worked out that way," Josh said. "Just about everything is the same about us."

On the field, there's at least one distinction: Josh has 10 tackles and two interceptions this year, while Nate has yet to make an appearance on the stat sheet.

To their teammates and coaches, though, they're one and the same.

"If we didn't have numbers the coaches wouldn't know who we were," Josh said. "We could switch on them, most of our teammates, all the guys in our fraternity."

Interestingly, the duo's gemini existence is not unique among the population of Penn athletes.

Through their jobs in the athletic department, the Powers have crossed paths with another pair of campus twins, track runners Hannah and Hallie Cope.

"They were working for a sprint football game that I worked and I said, 'You guys look alike,'" Hannah said. "They said 'Yeah, we're twins.' And I said, 'Oh, you must be the twins on the football team.' And they said 'Oh, you must be the twins on the track team.'"

While the doppelgangers of the gridiron are often difficult to differentiate, the Copes are noticeably more distinct.

"We're very different types of people," Hannah said. "I don't see myself as being a twin. I know I am, but I just see myself as having a sister of the same age."

And their path to joining the Quakers was a bit more circuitous. The track twins had to be persuaded by their junior high track coach to try running.

"After the first track meet - we were 400 [meter] runners - my body hurt so badly and I thought, 'I'm never doing this again,'" Hannah said. "But we had done pretty well, and we were pretty successful at it. We were beating some of the boys. And we were like, 'We'll stick with it.' And we did."

Then, it took some arm-twisting to get them to consider four years in West Philadelphia. Their original plan called for staying in their native Ohio.

Unlike the Powers, they're never in direct competition, since Hannah long ago ditched the 400 for hurdles.

Their professed differences, though, have fallen on deaf ears.

"In high school we were Cope One and Cope Two - Hallie was Cope One," Hannah said, laughing. "I was like, really? Cope Two?"

She and her sister have also become acquainted with the other athletic twins on campus, including rowers Rebecca and Elizabeth Donald and Halley and Carey Sloane.

And although they are proud of their individual accomplishments, Hannah and Hallie are reaping the rewards of being twins.

"It works," Hallie said. "It's like having two closets."

The Powers, one can only imagine, feel the same way.

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