Penn Athletics weekend recap: Underdog wins and conference matchups on the road

Having reached October, many of Penn's teams are now in the heat of Ivy League or championship competition. Here's a look at how all of the Quakers' competing squads performed over the weekend.

Football

Arriving as the underdogs in Hanover, N.H., the Quakers upset Dartmouth on its own field, 23-17, although the endeavor reached double-overtime before Penn finally emerged victorious.

In continuation of its shutout against Lafayette, the Penn defense captured the Big Green who had averaged 36.5 points so far this season to just 17 points. 

Now-familiar names for Penn — senior defensive lineman Jake Heimlicher, sophomore quarterback Aidan Sayin, and senior running back Trey Flowers — stepped up to remain poised and determined even under lukewarm expectations.

Flowers was the name who delivered the win in the final moments, as he rushed for 24 yards on a second-and-11, setting up and scoring the one-yard touchdown. 

Cross Country

The men and women’s cross country teams traveled to Lehigh this weekend to take part in the 48th annual Paul Short Invitational. Both teams placed in the top 20 out of 46 schools competing, with the men’s team finishing 14th, and the women’s team finishing 18th.

Leading the way for the women’s team in just her third race of the season, junior Maeve Stiles ran a 19:57.3 6K to finish 15th out of 417 competitors, while senior captain Lizzy Bader followed with a career-best time of 20:41.1 to finish in 80th. The men’s team had a more collective effort with Dylan Throop, Michael Keehan, Zubeir Dagane, and Luke Johnson all finishing within the top 100 racers for the 8K race.

The Red and Blue will have a week off before heading over to Charlottesville, Va., for the Virginia-Panorama Falls Invitational on Oct. 15.

Field Hockey

The field hockey team went into the weekend looking to build on momentum from their 2-0 shutout of No. 24 Temple, but had to do so without senior captain Elita Van Staden, who was out for the weekend due to injury.

The team hosted No. 15 Harvard at Ellen Vagelos Field on Friday, and suffered their sixth one-goal loss of the season, falling 2-1 to the Crimson. 

On Sunday, the Quakers hosted Long Island University in a cold and rainy matchup, where they managed to pull off their second win of the season with a 2-0 shutout of the Sharks. Freshman Livia Loozen stepped up in her first collegiate start, scoring the first goal and assisting senior Meghan Ward in the third quarter to put LIU away.

Van Staden’s absence proved to be significant, with the team only managing to score one goal off 20 penalty corner opportunities across the two games. Her status is questionable going into next weekend when Penn travels to Ithaca, N.Y, looking to earn their first Ivy League win of the year against Cornell.

Tennis

Women’s tennis traveled to Princeton to compete in the ITA Northeast Regionals, where they experienced challenges in claiming victory. 

Almost all of Penn’s players were eliminated in the singles tournament in the Round of 64, and in the doubles tournament, Juliana Munhoz and Maya Urata managed to win one match before being eliminated in the Round of 16. The team, however, was without their best player, Sabine Rutlauka, whom they rested ahead of her appearance at the ITA Fall All-American Championships this week in Chapel Hill, N.C.

The men’s team traveled to Tulsa, Okla., for the Men’s All-American Championships with Aditya Gupta, Harsh Parikh, and Kevin Zhu competing in the men’s singles tournament. 

Gupta and Zhu had already earned a spot in the qualifying round and will play throughout this week, but Parikh had to win out in the pre-qualifying round over the weekend to earn his spot in this week’s tournament, and he did so with a victory over Indiana’s Luka Vukovic, and a hard-fought 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 victory over Auburn’s Raul Dobai.

Both teams will continue to compete this week in their respective All-American Championships.

Sprint Football

After being upset in their second game of the season with a 21-17 loss at Saint Thomas Aquinas, things did not improve for the sprint football team, when they hosted last year’s CSFL runner-up, Army.

Friday’s matchup proved that Penn’s team is still far away from competing with the likes of Army and Navy, as they were dismantled by the Black Knights in a 40-0 thrashing on Franklin Field. Army’s defensive line sacked quarterback Andrew Paolini 14 times. The Red and Blue were never really able to get the offense going.

The team will try to look past this matchup, as they prepare to host Chestnut Hill on Friday at 7 p.m.

Soccer

Both the men and women’s teams traveled to conference opponents this weekend, with the women taking on Cornell (1-5-4) in Ithaca, N.Y., for their second Ivy League matchup of the year, while the men traveled to New Haven, Conn., for a match with Yale (4-1-3). 

The men’s team came back from an 0-1 deficit early in the game to win their fifth-straight game 2-1, with Ben Stitz scoring for the fifth consecutive game, and with some late-game heroics from Leo Burney leading to the go-ahead goal with only a few minutes left.

The women’s team tied for an astonishing seventh time this season in their 1-1 game against the Big Red. An acrobatic volley by sophomore Isobel Glass in the eighth minute was the lone score for the Red and Blue. A season-high seven saves by keeper Laurence Gladu allowed Penn to survive for the draw.

The teams will host Ivy League opponents over the fall break, with the men hosting Dartmouth, and the women hosting Columbia, both games taking place on Oct. 8. 

Volleyball

The rough record continued for the Red and Blue, as volleyball's record dropped to 1-12 over the weekend, suffering a heartbreaking five-set loss at Harvard on Friday. A 3-1 loss to Dartmouth on Sunday in Hanover, N.H., continued the streak of defeats, where the team did their best to come back from two sets down, but it was not enough against the Big Green.

Penn is now 0-3 in Ivy play and will host Columbia and Cornell on Friday and Saturday, respectively.