Tenth-seeded M. Tennis finishes 12th at ECACs

The Quakers dropped a heart-breaking 4-3 match to Columbia, rebounded to defeat Rutgers, 5-2, but then fell to Navy on Saturday. One might look at the 12th-place finish of the Penn men's tennis team in last weekend's ECAC tournament and not deem it a success. That depends though on which litmus test is used. "Success at this point of the season can only be measured on the basis of improvement, and after this weekend I can say we attained a level of success," Quakers coach Gene Miller said. Penn, which was a semifinalist the past three years at the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference event, entered the tournament at Princeton seeded 10th in a 16-team field. In the first round, they faced a competitive Columbia team. Friday started ominously, as the No. 1 doubles team of Marc Fisicaro and Tejas Patel lost their first match. Things began to look up for Penn, though, as its second team of Dominic Rioux and David Schwartzman won its doubles match and Fisicaro, ranked 27th in the region, bounced back to defeat Salil Sheshadri, the third-ranked player in the region, in straight sets, 7-5, 6-4. "It was a great win for Marc," Miller said. "He was able to beat a player who might have been better than him with intelligence and a great work ethic." Patel, Schwartzman and Rioux failed to sustain the momentum, falling in their singles matches. Penn suffered a heartbreaking defeat, 4-3. Later in the day, Penn manhandled Rutgers by a score of 5-2. This outburst was spearheaded by singles victories by Fisicaro (4-6, 6-2, 6-2 over Scott McGrath), Patel (6-1, 4-6, 6-0 over David Birnbaum), Rioux (6-4, 6-2 over Alex DeAngeles) and freshman Joey Zupan (6-4,6-2 over Devarshi Mitra). The No. 1 and No. 2 doubles teams also came away with victories to secure the doubles point. Saturday, in the final match of the weekend, the Quakers lost to Navy in disappointing fashion, 5-2. "We beat Navy last year, so I think that we expected to do better against them this time around," Rioux said. There were two bright spots in the loss, as Eric Sobotka had a straight set victory in his match, and the team of Rioux and Schwartzman won again to complete a sweep of its weekend matches. Despite ending on a losing note, Miller was impressed with his team. "Every single guy is performing; they are all coming to play. Even in the loss to Columbia, we were right in it up to the final singles match." From here, the next step is to make technical improvements so that more consistency can be developed leading into the spring season, according to Miller. Also, Rioux expresses the players' need to build on their confidence and stamina. "We have a great chemistry, and we can compete with any team in the region, but we just have to believe that," Rioux said. "WeEalso need to become adapted to long weekends, getting into the mind-set of playing six matches in three days." Overall, the dual match format of the ECAC served well for those who haven't played much tennis on a competitive level in the last four months and heading into the final two individual tournaments of the fall season, both at home, the beginning seeds have been sown for this young team to grow.