W. Tennis wants an Ivy win

Often in sports, a team is left with mixed emotions if it played well, but still lost. After all, the satisfaction of performing at the highest possible level can be great, but it is just as deflating to drop any contest. This has been the case with the Penn women's tennis team (10-4, 0-4 Ivy League). The Quakers have come up short in all four league matches, yet the scores were never indicative of the way they played. Penn hosts Brown (5-10, 0-3) and Yale today and tomorrow, respectively. This is the second consecutive Ivy weekend for the Quakers. The disappointing league record does not reflect how the Quakers have played. In fact, Penn has simply come up short in many close matches. This was best exemplified when the Quakers played Dartmouth last Saturday. The Big Green's facility is one of the worst in the Ivy League. Yet the first doubles team of junior Barrie Bernstein and sophomore Pretty Sorathia was able to notch a victory. Also, Bernstein won her singles match while senior co-captain Suejin Kim won her match handily at third singles. Along with the victories, three sets were forced into a seventh game. But in each, the Quakers didn't come out on top. This pattern of winning a few matches, and coming up just short in the others is reflective of the three other Ivy matches Penn has lost. When the Quakers lost to Princeton in March, they lost two matches in the final game of the third set. And when Cornell traveled to the Lott Courts, it handed Penn yet another gut-wrenching defeat by winning 4-3. The one Quaker who has exemplified this "so-close-yet-so-far attitude" has been senior co-captain Leanne Mos. Although she has come up on the short end of her conference matches, there was not one match she was out of. She is just waiting for her luck to change. "My goals are just to finish out the season with three wins," Mos said. "I still think we're one of the better teams in the Ivies. I'm playing well, but it's just a matter of winning a match at this point. So far this year, Yale (5-5, 2-0) has been inconsistent. Last weekend the Elis beat Princeton 5-2 on the road, yet they lost 5-4 to both Cal State Northridge and Loyola Marymount. This is the exact opposite of the outcome when Penn faced these same teams. The Quakers were defeated by the Tigers 6-1, but they trounced the two California schools on their spring trip. Penn beat both Northridge and Marymount by similar 7-2 margins. It's now just a question of which Eli team will show up. Right now the Quakers aren't concerned with who they're playing. They just want to get their first Ivy victory. "We just want to get back on track," Penn coach Cissie Leary said. "We should be fine, but we'll just have to play and see."