05/15/09 5:00am
My parents' histories have a curious way of haunting me, no matter how vigorous my evasive maneuvering. Strangely enough, the combination of my mother's and father's efforts to let me evolve into my own person has - upon reflection on my time at The Daily Pennsylvanian and at Penn - completely backfired.
04/23/09 5:00am
If you ask Tim Hickey about his time coaching girls' track at William Penn High School in the 1970s, you're bound to reel from his musings.
"Girls were unofficial at that time, so I was unofficial," he said with a chuckle.
It's not without a reason that Hickey began his narrative of his career with girls' high school track tongue-in-cheek.
04/03/09 5:00am
If Penn softball has one thing going for it this year, it's a deep pitching staff with some proven studs.
Those aces will get their toughest test yet against the two top offensive teams in the Ivy League, Brown and Yale, when the Quakers (6-17-1, 1-3 Ivy) make a road trip this weekend.
03/25/09 5:00am
When softball meets Lehigh tomorrow in a doubleheader at Warren Field, the Mountain Hawks will be the third set of predatory birds that the Quakers have met in seven days.
Each time, Penn has come out looking more like the prey.
After two humbling losses in the Quakers' home opener against the Saint Joseph's Hawks, 4-1 and 10-0, the young Penn team dropped two razor thin losses to the Monmouth Hawks, both by the score of 1-0.
03/17/09 5:00am
Sometimes, all you need is a dazzling finale to forget the rest of the show.
Despite returning with a surprising 3-7 record, the Penn softball team left the Rebel Spring Games in Kissimmee, Fla., with a bang, turning the final game against Florida A&M; over to the young players for the win, 3-2.
03/06/09 5:00am
Forget the Grapefruit League - if you're looking for some good ball this break, the Ivy League will be out in full force in the Sunshine State.
The Penn softball team will be one of five Ivy teams - Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Yale are the others - to head to Florida for the annual Rebel Spring Games, a month-long collegiate tournament held in Kissimmee.
03/02/09 5:00am
"Player development" might have been bumped down a few spots on softball coach Leslie King's to-do list after this weekend.
Rookie Jamie Boccanfuso accounted for four of the Quakers' seven runs batted in as Penn softball went 1-2 in its opening weekend at the George Mason Tournament in Fairfax, Va.
02/23/09 5:00am
The year was 1959. Dwight Eisenhower was president, Hawaii and Alaska were new states in the union and CBS' The Twilight Zone had just become a primetime staple in suburban living rooms everywhere.
That year was also the last time that the Dartmouth men's basketball team swept Penn.
02/17/09 5:00am
These days, it only comes around once in a blue moon -- like fresh bagels at Hill House brunch or a Philadelphia championship.
The stars have aligned, however, to give meaning to a rivalry that hasn't seen real action since a heart-pounding Penn comeback over the Tigers in 2005, when Quakers faithful rushed the court after their team rallied from an 18-point second-half deficit at the Palestra.
02/13/09 5:00am
Forgive Brown coach Jesse Agel for sounding less than concerned about his backcourt.
"We'll do our best to free our guys up," Agel said of his guards, waving off the question.
Though Brown's dismal 0-6 Ivy record (6-14 overall) has a lot to do with how different the Bears' perimeter looks this year - Agel lost his All-Ivy guard duo of Mark McAndrew and Damon Huffman to graduation last spring - his squad's outside presence isn't what he'll need against Penn (5-13, 1-3 Ivy) tonight in Providence, R.
02/12/09 5:00am
Just think of Rob Belcore as the Scottie Pippen to Zack Rosen's Michael Jordan.
That is, if your Scottie was a slightly scruffy college freshman with a penchant for video games, and your Michael is his six-foot, carrot-top roommate from North Jersey.
Yes, the analogy isn't a perfect fit for Belcore and the red-headed Rosen.
02/06/09 5:00am
Though the Quakers' Ivy home-opener against Columbia tonight may seem like a mere distraction before Saturday's matchup against defending champion Cornell, Penn coach Glen Miller swears that the Goliath that is Big Red basketball isn't overshadowing a potential David in the foreground.
01/30/09 5:00am
An eight-game losing streak and a 2-12 non-conference record earlier this year didn't predicate a successful season for Big Green basketball.
Toppling a huge Ivy contender on the road just two games into league play, however, is no fluke.
"They certainly have some good pieces to the puzzle," Penn coach Glen Miller mused about the Dartmouth squad's victory over Harvard.
01/27/09 5:00am
Depending on how far one can stretch the transitive property, Dartmouth could very well stake a de facto claim to the nation's top spot.
The perennial Ivy League bottom-feeder turned heads in the Ivy League this Saturday by making neat work of Harvard in overtime, putting away the Crimson by a decisive 75-66 score in Boston.
01/22/09 5:00am
One of two things could have cemented Penn's final resting place on the bottom of the Big 5 food chain: the 17 first-half points for Penn, or the nine-minute scoreless streak.
The last twenty minutes, however, did show that it's still territory worth fighting for.
01/16/09 5:00am
When you're in a rut, sloppy seconds may not look so bad - even if they are coming from the likes of Columbia and Yale.
Disheartened by Navy, demoralized by UCF and destroyed by Temple, the Quakers (3-8) are headed to the Garden State tomorrow to take on NJIT, a team emerging from back-to-back thrashings by the Lions and Bulldgos a mere week ago.
12/02/08 5:00am
There was no hiding the blood that stained the uniforms of Villanova players Reggie Redding and Dante Cunningham in last weekend's Philly Classic championship game against Rhode Island. The red spread so quickly that both were forced to change clothes in the second half.
11/25/08 5:00am
For all the Penn students who have ever received Penn State gear as a graduation gift, Quakers basketball can be a source of retribution.
Coming into tonight's matchup at the Palestra, Penn holds a commanding 31-12 edge over the school that has plagued its name recognition for so long.
11/18/08 5:00am
By ASHLEY HUMIENNY
Staff Writer
humienny@dailypennsylvanian.com
When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of being a "big man on campus" in his novels, the famed author's idealization certainly did not include 7 a.m. practices, iffy dining hall food and a pre-season prognosis of failure.
11/14/08 5:00am
The Palestra - the hallowed "Cathedral of College Basketball" - has played host to more NCAA tournament games than any other arena. Yet no Ivy League school has haunted Division I basketball's own holy ground, the NCAA Final Four, since the Quakers' Dream Team of 1979, the second-round David to North Carolina's No.
