Penn fall teams finish releasing 2017 schedules

Penn teams and fans can finish setting their calendars for fall sports’ seasons.

Red and Blue teams have released their 2017-2018 schedules throughout the summer, and with the earliest teams beginning to arrive on campus, all fall schedules have been completely finalized. Student-athletes and coaches can begin gameplan preparations and fans can clear their schedules for all the marquee games.

Penn men’s soccer will begin the season with four of its first five games at Rhodes Field, though the team's season opener comes on the road in its first-ever matchup against Monmouth. The season features three games against local rivals, La Salle, Villanova and Drexel, while also including first-time showdowns against Bowling Green, and SIU-Edwardsville.

The non-conference slate, which also includes a tough road match at West Virginia, leads up to the first Ivy League matchup at home against Cornell. October and early November are filled with Ivy League play, culminating in a visit to Harvard on November 11.

The Quakers return sixteen student-athletes from last season, including eight starters and three All-Ivy selections. Penn also features an incoming freshman class led by midfielder Joseph Bhangdia, from Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, who was recently named the male NSCAA High School Scholar Player of the Year. In his twentieth season, coach Rudy Fuller leads a team that finished 5-6-6 (3-3-1 Ivy) last season, tied with Brown for third place in the standings only behind Dartmouth and Columbia, who shared the Ivy title.

Penn volleyball also released its 2017-2018 schedule, hoping to improve from its sixth-place Ivy finish last season, at 10-16 (5-9 Ivy). Coach Katie Schumacher-Cawley kicks off her first season at Penn, after fourteen years coaching at the University of Illinois-Chicago and winning an NCAA Championship as an All-American playing at Penn State.

The Quakers begin the season with three tournaments, starting on September 1 with the George Mason Tournament, where the Quakers will face Campbell, Central Michigan and Houston, all first-time opponents. Penn, which returns every single player from its 2016 roster, then returns home for the Penn/La Salle Tournament beginning September 8.

Ivy League play opens with three conference road games in Princeton, New Haven, and Providence. The Quakers have a huge test early on against the Tigers, who finished at the top of the Ivy League last season, at 19-5 (13-1 Ivy). After a stretch of seven consecutive weekends of Ivy action, the regular season ends on the road against Harvard on November 11.

Penn men's and women's cross country revealed their schedules this summer, too. The Quakers start the year at the Rider Invitational on September 2 in Pennington, New Jersey. Other notable meets include the Main Line Invitational on September 15 at Haverford College and the Wisconsin Invitational on October 13. 

Just one day later, the Quakers compete in the Princeton Invitational on October 14, and then the Ivy Heptagonal Championships on October 27, where the men look to defend their 2016 title. If all goes as well as it did a year ago, the men's and women's seasons could culminate at the NCAA National Championships on November 18 in Louisville, Kentucky.

As New Student Orientation rapidly approaches, excitement is brewing for fall athletics. Red and Blue student-athletes and fans alike are anxiously waiting for these matchups to go from paper to the field.