When Penn women's tennis coach Mike Dowd arrived in Philadelphia in December 1996 at the ripe age of 24, he was starving. He was looking for tennis players who wanted to sit down at the table with him and dig in.
"We wanted to find hungry tennis players, players that are still getting better and wanted to prove themselves when they got to college," Dowd said of his plan to reinvent the program.
Since 1997, Dowd's first season in charge, Penn has been the only women's tennis team to finish in the Ivy League's top three spots each season. In that time, the team has won three Ivy titles and played in five NCAA tournaments. And since 2000, the Quakers have been ranked in the top 75 of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association every year.
He hopes that this season will not be just another note in the records, but a page in a scrapbook on which he could look back upon fondly.
"I'm trying to enjoy the moment," Dowd said of spending one last year coaching seniors Julia Koulbitskaya, Yulia Rivelis, Michelle Mitchell and Charlotte Tansill.
The three captains have spent their entire collegiate career playing for Dowd, and Tansill transferred from North Carolina for her junior year.
"They've been top players for us for four years, more or less," Dowd said.
"It seems like yesterday that they were freshmen, and I really appreciate how much they've given to the program, and each year they've worked just as hard."
That hard work, according to the captains, is what Dowd preaches and practices.
"I think that when we're playing our matches, coach has really instilled in us to really fight hard, for everyone on our team, from first spot to sixth spot, work hard in practice and what we do in practice really affects how we play in our matches," Mitchell said.
It seems that the team and its captains have completely bought into Dowd's team philosophy.
After Dowd brought the program its first-ever Ivy title in 2001, his Quakers' team made it a back-to-back story by clinching the crown again in 2002.
This year the team once again has high hopes of a repeat.
The Red and Blue of 2008 look much like their counterparts of 2007, who tore through the Ivy League. The team lost two seniors to graduation, meaning only two new names appear in the 2008 roster.
"We have a nucleus of just about everybody returning from last year's team, so our team will be as strong if not stronger than last year," Dowd said of his team's chances for repeated success.
But he warned that "we've had strong teams before and finished second or third."
His players, it appears, won't fall into that trap easily. Instead, they'll suit up each day ready to fight every battle, and try to remain as hungry as its coach.
"I'm looking forward to everybody giving it their all every single match, to everybody performing to their full potential, which I think is pretty high," Rivelis said.
"If that should happen, I think we should do pretty well."
It's no coincidence that this streak of consistent success started the year Michael Dowd became the women's tennis coach.
If he decides to follow in his father's footsteps and coach collegiate tennis for 45 years, Penn women's tennis could be rolling in glory for a long time to come.
But Mike Dowd's appetite for victory may never be sated.
