QUAKER SPORTS ROUNDUP: M. Tennis does not reach goals

Young and injury-prone -- but talented, the Penn men's tennis team went on a roller-coaster ride this season that ended all downhill with five straight losses. Before that slide, all in Ivy play, the Quakers (14-10, 3-6 EITA) were feeling pretty good about themselves, compiling a strong 14-5 record while winning three of four against EITA foes. Thoughts of qualifying for the NCAAs danced across their minds. But those thoughts quickly evaporated after a pair of defeats during the big Harvard-Dartmouth weekend. With those losses, Penn was realistically out of NCAA contention. The Quakers played like they knew it -- losing their remaining three matches by identical 5-2 scores. "We lost a little incentive to play after Harvard and Dartmouth," freshman J.J Cramer said. "After that we didn't perform very well." Even with the very unspectacular ending, the season was successful for Penn in many respects. The Quakers improved on last year's overall and EITA record of 12-12 and 2-7, respectively. Penn also dipped into the top 100 national rankings at 87th. "Pretty good," Penn coach Gene Miller said of the season. "It was our best one yet. I didn't like the way we finished, but there were reasons for that." Miller cited injuries as the main reason for the collapse. Although every team usually encounters the occasional disabling, injuries became a trademark of Penn. Miller estimated that 75 percent of the players were injured during the season. Even those players that did not miss time often had nagging injuries. "The last couple of matches were when all the injuries started to take its toll," senior captain David Nathan said. "Towards the end, it started to wear us down." The injuries also took their toll on perhaps the Quakers' biggest problem this season, their doubles play. The battle for the doubles point, which begins the contest, is won when a team wins two of the three doubles matches. Incredibly, over and over again, Penn narrowly lost the doubles point. This happened against Brown, Princeton, West Virginia and Harvard. Not so coincidentally, all those teams beat the Quakers this year. The doubles point, although only one of seven in a dual match, often serves as a bellwether for the entire match. The players and coach both said the problem with the doubles was that the pairings were always changing because of injuries. The unfamiliarity between the partners showed at crucial points. "We were a little banged up with injuries," Miller said. "It caused us to mix and match with the doubles teams. I had to switch things around. And if you lose doubles, that affects singles play." The highlights of the season included road victories over Army and Cornell, and a home victory over George Washington, which was then ranked No. 4 in the region. Also, a 7-0 blanking of Navy was especially sweet. Miller was an assistant coach with the Midshipmen before coming to the Quaker helm. "I think beating Navy was a big highlight," Nathan said. "They finished one or two spots ahead of us for the last two years. Last year we felt we should have beat them handily." Miller cited the 5-2 loss to Yale after Penn won the doubles as a lowlight. He also called the 5-2 loss to Brown, a team the Quakers beat last year, a "definite disappointment." The Quakers had many up-and-down performances in an injury-plagued year. Although this campaign was better than the last one, the team wanted to achieve more than just improvement. But that is exactly what Penn will have to settle for this year. "The season went well," Cramer said. "We didn't finish as high as what we hoped for or what our goals were. Although it was disappointing to lose tough matches to the top teams, it was definitely a sign of improvement."