M. Tennis is successful

After weeks of grueling practices, the men's tennis team hit the courts for real this past weekend and came away with positive results at Navy, Swarthmore and the ITA National Clay Court championships at Baltimore. At the ITAs in Baltimore, four of the five men who went reached the second round. Ian Enverga played the No. 5 player on the North Carolina team and won 6-3, 6-3 in the first round. "The last three weeks of practice prepared me very well for match play," Enverga said. The success at the ITAs was very exciting considering the team's past futility at this prestigious event. The success is especially sweet because this tournament is one of the four NCAA men's grand slams. "The team started slow but ended with a big finish with numerous bright spots," Penn coach Gene Miller said. "I was pleased with results for this time of year." Not all of the Quakers qualified for the ITAs, however. Three members of the team competed at the Berman Invitational at Swarthmore, where all three had a memorable weekend. Ehud Kish, Urs Bacrtscmi and Andrew Pozatek all won their individual flights without even having to play a third set. Kish defeated Marcus Nilsson of Bloomsburg 6-3, 6-4 in the final of flight A. Bacrtscmi shellacked Juston Hom of Georgetown 6-1, 6-3 in taking flight B, while Pozatek beat Penn teammate Tejas Patel 6-2, 6-2 to win flight C. Due to his tremendous play this past weekend, Kish, an Israeli native, was named Ivy League Rookie of the Week for the week of Sep. 18-24. He made it to the final round when American University's Nils Broering defaulted before winning the final with the 6-3, 6-4 count. "Kish has tremendous tennis talent," Miller said. "He is very team oriented and is an extremely hard worker. He has great leadership skills already as a freshman." The Navy All-Conference Tournament also yielded great results for Penn. Brian O'Grady went 3-0 in singles play. In addition, David Graziani, Dan Chen and Zaid Alisikafi went 2-1.