W. Tennis set for weekend pair

The Penn women's tennis team is going into a very important weekend with a bittersweet taste in its mouth. The Quakers are riding high because of their thrashing of Maryland Tuesday, but they also have the memory of last Friday's loss to Ivy-foe Princeton to contend with. Today at the Lott Courts, Penn (9-1, 0-1 Ivy League) will face Syracuse (4-4) at 2 p.m. The squad will host Cornell (8-2, 0-0) tomorrow at noon. This weekend is important because the Quakers are looking to gain momentum and confidence as they head into their Ivy League schedule. Syracuse represents Penn's last non-league opponent for the remainder of the season. The Orangemen will pose a threat because they boast the top two players in the region in Jana Strnadova and Erica O'Neill. The two come in with winning percentages of .783 and .784, respectively. Another potential problem the Quakers must deal with is their lack of rest between matches. By playing a rare midweek match against the Terrapins, and then going to play two additional matches off two days rest, fatigue threatens to be a factor. Even though Syracuse has been off for six days, Penn doesn't feel there will be a problem. "During practice you get more intense," Penn junior Barrie Bernstein said. "You can't only get intense during matches. If anything, [the midweek match] will help us more. When you rest a week, you get too lax in practice. [Instead] it's only two days off and then we jump back into matches, we got more intense." Going into the Maryland match, Penn planned to use it as practice for the Ivy schedule. This is somewhat the case with today's match. Although the Quakers will use the Orangemen to prepare for the Big Red, they still will be intent on winning. "Once you're on the court, you play hard," Penn coach Cissie Leary said. "Cornell may be what we're focusing on, but once you're on the court you're going to play." When tomorrow arrives, the Quakers will be trying to notch their first Ivy win of the season. The general mood of the team is that they're expecting to win. They feel they turned out a strong performance against Princeton, and that confidence was strengthened with Tuesday's victory. But Cornell will not be overlooked. "Cornell is an Ivy match, so obviously it is very important," senior co-captain Suejin Kim said. "It's a crucial match because we expect to win. But we know we're playing well even though we lost. We are playing with a lot of confidence." This weekend represents the start of a streak of six consecutive Ivy matches which will include Cornell, Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale and Columbia. After today's contest with the Orangemen, the Quakers will try to change that bittersweet taste still lingering in their mouths into pure honey.