Controversy burns Penn at Rolex

Penn's Anastasia Pozdniakova wasPenn's Anastasia Pozdniakova wasdisqualified from the RolexPenn's Anastasia Pozdniakova wasdisqualified from the RolexChampionships in the fourth round. Freshman Anastasia Pozdniakova, the No. 1 singles player for the Penn women's tennis team, has been playing tennis her entire life. The daughter of a tennis coach, she was brought up to play not only well, but to play with a deep respect for the game. Among the trophies that litter her closet from her career, one of her most prized is an Intercollegiate Tennis Association award for sportsmanship. Watching her play, one quickly understands how she can handle herself with such integrity. With the kind of talent and natural ability she is gifted with, she doesn't need to play with anything else. That is what makes what happened this past weekend at the Rolex Intercollegiate Tennis Championships so difficult for her to understand. After battling her way to the fourth round of the tournament, which featured the top tennis players on the East Coast, Pozdniakova was disqualified when she was overruled for the fourth time in a match against Maryland's Meg Griffin. For Pozdniakova, the match was nothing less than a complete shock. She plans to write a letter to the ITA protesting the disqualification. "It was just ridiculous," Pozdniakova said. In intercollegiate tennis, each player is allowed to make the calls that happen in their own end. If a ball lands close to the line and a player at that end makes the call in her favor, the opposing player is allowed to challenge it -- leaving the ultimate decision with the line judge. Pozdniakova was overruled once. She didn't think anything of it. She was overruled again and was penalized a point. She began to get nervous. Fearing further deductions, she started making close calls in favor of her opponent. Making a call which she thought was clearly a few inches out, Griffin questioned, and yet again the line judge ruled against Pozdniakova. This time, Pozdniakova was penalized an entire game. Frustrated, Pozdniakova tried to pull herself together. The match was far from over, as she was leading the second set 2-1 after falling in a close tie-breaker in the first, 7-6. Despite the bad breaks she was receiving from the line judge, she knew that she could still pull the match out. The very next call Pozdniakova made, one in which she was certain the ball was out, Griffin questioned. The line judge ruled in favor of Griffin. The match was over, leaving Griffin the victor and Pozdniakova with a bewildering loss. "The last two calls I made were clearly out," Pozdniakova said. "I was put into a situation where I couldn't play and couldn't make any calls, and it seemed like whenever I did make a call, they said I was wrong." What rankled most about Pozdniakova's predicament was the fact that it happened in the midst of an otherwise successful performance for the Penn team at the biggest individual tournament of the fall. With the top 128 collegiate women's tennis players in the East vying for the title, Penn had the distinction of having four players in the individual tournament and its top doubles team also competing. Other than Pozdniakova, Karen Ridley was the only Penn player to make it past the second round, winning her first match easily, 6-1, 6-2 and her second over Richmond's Bridget Merrick in a tight duel, 6-2, 6-7, 6-4. In the third round, she played well, but eventually fell to the No. 6 seed of the tournament, Vanessa Pardo of Virginia Tech, 6-2, 6-2. Penn co-captain Lara Affanassiev suffered a disappointing first round loss, 6-4, 6-3, and sophomore Julia Feldman fell in the second round to the No. 4 seed, Lorraine Bittles, 1-6, 6-1, 6-3. But the two paired up to make an impressive run in the doubles tournament. After receiving a first round bye, the duo easily dispensed of their first opponents, 8-2, to find themselves in the third round with the unenviable task of facing the No. 4 seed in the tournament, the team of Kristin Downing and Laura McCracken from Seton Hall. There, Afanassiev and Feldman's day should have ended, but they managed to pull out the unlikely victory, 9-7, and found themselves in the fourth round with a date with the No. 1 seed of the entire tournament. Unfortunately, it was not to be, as the Penn duo's run ended with a 6-2, 6-1 defeat. The loss, however, did not mar the team's impressive performance, which capped off an up-and-down day for the entire Penn squad. Despite Pozdniakova's controversial disqualification, the team's overall performance coupled with a recent ranking of No. 58 in the nation leaves the Quakers with good reason for optimism for the upcoming fall season. Penn had not been ranked all year. As for Pozdniakova, she does plan to file a protest, but promises to shrug off the loss once she is able to state her case. "I just want the ITA to know that I am not that type of a player," she said.