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The 2026 Penn Relays, Day 2, A tour of the Stadium, by Orrin Konheim

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The 2026 Penn Relays, Day 2, A tour of the Stadium, by Orrin Konheim

On the second day of the event, it seems appropriate to take you on a tour of the stadium. It is split up into three sections.

On the southeast side by the Paley Bridge is a sea of high school teams. I pushed through the dense clusters of student groups, hoping to spot either of the two high schools my relatives run for or my friend Chris Pellegrini, who coaches national powerhouse West Springfield High School in Virginia.

We both reveled in the high jumping and pole vaulting. If you were in the lower stands, you can partake in the clapping for the high jumpers. I rarely saw a high jumper clear the bar. Coach Pellegrini explained that the high jumpers aren’t performing well because of the change in surfaces.

Despite being a coach for something like 25 years at West Springfield, Coach Pelligrini is as animated as ever. Before the men’s 3000 race, he talked up Trent Daniels of the Virginia school in Gainesville, who “doesn’t lose.” Sure enough, Daniels made the right move with about 300 to go and took the win in 8:18.82. As Pelligrini and I watched runners from Virginia schools like Edison, West Potomac, and Thomas Jefferson, a small sense of pride in Virginia’s representation at the meet emerged.

Judd Armstrong of North Carolina State beat UConn’s Derek Shimer; both jumped 6’ 11’, but Armstrong won by miss count. Similarly, Danielle Noble of Clemson beat Fordham’s Zoe Arakeilan and Binghamton’s Lucciana Robertson at the 5’’ 8 ¾’ height.

On the northeast side, there are many Jamaicans. Two different camps estimated that about 80% of the people in this section were Jamaicans. I asked why they all congregated in the same place, and the general consensus was that they could be at the finish line. This worked in funny ways as the Jamaicans seemed slightly indifferent to all but the final lap of several long races. Once the runners got to the last lap, the Jamaicans were standing up from their seats and cheering like Usain Bolt was running.

This section is the most expensive, with tickets ranging from $80 to a staggering $250 on Saturday.

A spirited woman named Fluffy Lewis gave me a bunch of colorful quotes (i.e. “Jamaicans are born running from the womb”). On a practical level, she explained that Jamaicans are now requiring 1500- and mile running at their high schools, so the world should expect more high-level middle-distance runners from that country.

Besides contributing much of the audience revenue, the Jamaicans also contribute a lot of their most promising athletes. The Jamaican high school national champions are in March, but many see this as an unofficial rematch. Many high schoolers also see this as the optimal pipeline to college recruiting. The college system in Jamaica does not have athletics.

“It’s sad because we don’t have resources there to fund athletes, and sometimes we have to put up with people taking advantage of us for a better future,” said UDC athlete Kyndra Hines. She notes that she’s had a good experience.

The southwest side is occupied by high schools, but the college kids take over significant portions of it like high school jocks shoving aside the nerds during peak college times. At least that was the case last year. This year, college athletes aren’t in the stands nearly as much.  The degree to which they stay in the same place. They seem to be hovering around the infield and in the warm-up area, which is over 200 meters away across a pedestrian bridge. The infield is so crowded that they have a special team of “infield clerks” to manage the chaos. I had lunch with an infield clerk today.

In this section of the stadium, I met the UPenn Lady Quakers. As I mentioned yesterday, Penn athletes were running several of the distance races. They explained that only a select few who had a chance to win the race were staying in it, while many got a good workout as rabbits. I asked if, with their rabbit duties and set-up work, they estimated they were working more or less.

Lindsay Yakaboski answered, “More, because we can go anywhere we want.” Penn athletes are granted an all-access pass. Nearly everyone in the Penn athletic department is enlisted to work this event for the weekend, but the Penn track team is given space to focus solely on their races.

Bullis runner Quincy Wilson, a 2024 Olympian in high school, is the biggest source of water-cooler buzz. Random people were asking me about when Quincy was running, and I heard about a meet director who was using his own money to pay an appearance fee for Bullis. However, Jayden Davis of Arizona State is the current world lead in the 400, and he’s flying quite below the radar.

Similarly, Juliette Whitaker, a Paris Olympian in the 800 and another Bullis graduate, went virtually unnoticed among the crowds. She got a little more attention on the field as she broke the DMR wide open before she narrowly escaped the oncoming rush of Providence’s Maeve O’Neill to hold the lead. The North Carolina team of Sydney Masciarelli, Delea Martins, Makayla Paige, and Boston University transfer Vera Sjoberg had to pull out some career-best performances to hold off Stanford by .08 seconds.

The men’s distance relay was home to a litany of heavy hitters with Virginia Tech’s George Couttie and Nicholas Plant; Washington’s Tyler Bilyard and Rueben Reina; Virginia’s Nathan Mountain and Gary Martin all present. It ended up coming down to the wire between Oregon anchor Simeon Birbaum and Villanova anchor Marco Langon.

Marco Langon is another athlete who’s fast becoming popular for his accomplishments on the field and a touchstone of debate for his personality off the field. Marco Langon of Villanova, who was the top American finisher in last year’s NCAA 5K race, the runner-up in the 2026 indoor NCAA 5K, the 3rd fastest 3K collegiate runner of all-time, and holds a number of other distinctions that prove he is one of the greats. But he is also incredibly hard on himself, expressing that intensity in a way that makes him a polarizing figure. I think he’s an excellent athlete, but he’d be a better role model if he could handle losing better in public. Sports is generally a metaphor for life, and life doesn’t always go your way.

However, while the media mob around him was too large for me to get close enough to hear, colleagues told me he was more even-tempered than usual, which was a good sign.

Wherever you sit, the heat is pretty scorching in the middle of the day. The stadium is vertically split into two tiers, and the overhang of the second tier provides a refreshing level of shade if you get high enough in the lower-tier nosebleeds. The temperature differential changes so much once you get in the shade, it’s reminiscent of the sloppy visual FX of the 1966 Batman episode depicting Mr. Freeze’s den.

One of the last events of the night was the corporate DMR. Penn Relays spokesman Eric Raumen described it as separate from the rest of the relays.

“It’s a fun run that is offered to our corporate sponsors,” said Raumen.

What’s more, this was the only event of the day where the runners got free pizza, so there’s ample reason for everyone else to feel jealous of them (in all fairness, the media got free pizza as well).

My friend and I sat next to someone whose wife had traveled from Houston to represent ExxonMobil. Can you imagine if Exxon ran that event the year after the Alaska oil spill? It might make for some good PR.

Despite rules that each quartet must include someone over 40 and a woman, the winning times were pretty impressive.

I got an interview with the 4th-place finisher, Epic, who came from Wisconsin. All four had strong youth running backgrounds before signing up for the race.

“We’ve been wanting to do this for a few years, and this is the first year we had enough people sign up to have [enough of a showing] for the corporate DMR,” said team coach Rebecca Coombes, whose duties involve designing the shirts, setting up training schedules, booking the lodging, and cheering from the sidelines.

Tomorrow will be a day of finals for the high school relays; highly competitive college relays in the 4 X 1500, 4 X mile, and 4 X 800; and the Olympic development races.

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