Cornell Track Travels to Quaker Invitational, Hopes for Clear Skies

The men’s and women’s track teams travel to Philadelphia, Penn. this weekend to compete in the Quaker Invitational, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania. The competition will be strong, as Army, Delaware, Gettysburg, Haverford, La Salle, Rowan, Towson and Villanova, along with other schools, will all be competing in the invitational.

This will be the first event for the Red since its strong performance in Irvine, Calif. at the UC Irvine Collegiate Classic two weekends ago, where the men and women combined for 13 wins and 50 top-5 finishes. A sense of momentum is something the Red is looking forward to carrying into its competition this weekend.

“A lot of the girls have a general consensus that we’re feeling pretty good,” said senior Andrea Kavleski, who competes in both the hammer and weight. “We had some good performances out [in California]; we had multiple ECAC qualifiers and regional qualifiers from our team.”

Last season, the Red produced seven event wins along with 30 top-5 finishes in Philadelphia. Although a solid performance, the Red is looking forward to improving this year. It knows that there will be a lot of strong competition, which it is looking forward to.

[1]Quaking Quakers: Sophomore Owen Kimple (above) competes March 2. The Red travels to UPenn this weekend.

“It’s a big meet with lots of good competition,” said senior sprinter Neil Baker. “For some people on the team it’s their first competition of the season, so we’re definitely ready to go. And of course Penn is hosting the meet, anytime we go against another Ivy League team it’s a big deal.”

As they have been approaching the main portion of their season, the players have been relentless, training extremely hard, preparing for what they know could be a very successful season.

“It was spring break but we still worked our tails off,” Kavleski said. “And we’ve been working just as hard ever since we got back.”

The weather could prove to be a factor in Philadelphia this weekend, as forecasts call for rain. After training and competing indoors for so long, the Red may be forced to deal with an obstacle they have not experienced as of late. However, the weather is one of the last concerns on anybody’s mind.

“You can’t worry about the weather,” Baker said. “It affects some events more than others, but there is little you can do to plan for it. You just have to be mentally prepared for anything.”