M. Tennis wakes up to first two matches

The South will rise again, but the Quakers will have the Southerners in their cross-hairs, looking to shoot them down every step of the way. The Penn men's tennis team exudes this sentiment. With a 2-1 record from the fall, Penn looks eagerly to their first match of the spring when they take the court against the Eagles of American and the Mountaineers of West Virginia tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. The Quakers will host the Penn Conference Classic -- the first competition of the dual match -- which will be the first team competition at Penn this year. This round-robin type format will give all three teams the chance to play one another in what will be a grueling day-long schedule. The structure of the event will be an unfamiliar one for the Red and Blue, because it allows each team to put only four singles players and one doubles team into the mix instead of the usual five singles and two doubles matches. American will be competing in its first dual match of the 1996-97 season, having sent players to a series of invitationals, including the North Carolina State Invite and the D.C. Metro Invitational. The West Virginia squad has more team match experience, playing two team matches this season. The Mountaineers, 1-1 on the season, defeated Akron and registered a loss to Louisville. At 2-1 Penn brings in the most wins as a team, having defeated both George Washington and Dartmouth by counts of 4-3. The sentiment within the team is that they will be posed with a difficult opposition, having no opportunity to ease into the season. The Quakers will look to be led by the play and experience of players like sophomore Udi Kish. "It's our opening match of the season, and we've been practicing really hard. We all arrived a couple days before the semester just to get ourselves ready," Kish said. The singles play will be led by Kish at the top spot, followed by junior Marc Fisicaro, Brad Goldberg and Michael Klatsky. The only doubles tandem playing will be that of senior co-captain J.J. Cramer and Dominic Rioux. Penn coach Gene Miller hopes this match will give him the opportunities he needs to fill out the rest of the positions. The sixth-year coach has chosen to break up his ranked doubles combination of Cramer and Goldberg, looking to give an extra player the opportunity to leave the confinement of engaging in match play only in practice. The format of this event allows the top players on the Quakers to emerge. Kish echoes the sentiment that this team's strength in depth may leave the battle for lineup positions a season-long competition within the team. Though Miller chose to place these four men in their respective positions, he feels that there are several others who may rotate through the lineup. The play of Joel Silman and Jordan Szeleky has provided Penn with a series of men capable of competing all the way up to the fourth and fifth spots. As the team returns senior leader Goldberg to his position with Cramer as a regionally ranked duo "a bunch of these guys could even slide up to three," according to Miller. Coming out at the beginning of the season with such intense competition, Miller has one objective. "We need to go out there and establish ourselves as a fighting team, we need to prove we are the team with the most hustle," Miller said. After a long fall season, hopes for a team ride to the top have returned to Levy Pavilion. Fueled by work and high aspirations, the Quakers want to be running on all gears from the start. "We are all ready; everyone is pretty much psyched," Kish said. Tomorrow's match with American and West Virginia will catapult the team off of the practice courts and into the competitive arena. "All the work has been done. All we can do now is go out and play," Miller said. The spring season will have arrived with the strike of the first serve this morning. The Penn men's tennis team will be ready to fight their way to the top of the region, beginning with the Penn Conference Classic.

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