Miller coaches last at Penn

The Penn men's tennis team faces Columbia in Gene Miller's last match as Quakers head coach. While the Penn Relays receive national attention Saturday afternoon, the Penn men's tennis team will try to close out its season with a winning note against Columbia on the Lott tennis courts. Penn coach Gene Miller will lead the Quakers (9-12, 3-5 EITA, 2-4 Ivy League) for the final time. Miller announced his retirement on March 2, citing "personal reasons" for his departure. In his seven seasons at Penn he has amassed a 96-73 overall record. Miller has scheduled matches with national powerhouses such as Florida and Pepperdine throughout his Penn tenure. As a result, Penn has become a stronger, more respected team in the Ivy League. During the 1994-95 season, Miller's Quakers collected 18 wins, the highest single-season victory total in school history. This season was no exception. Miller loaded the schedule -- perhaps the most difficult in his seven seasons -- with nationally ranked teams including Illinois, U. Cal. Irvine and Miami, to name a few. The difficulty of this season's schedule may have been extreme. The Quakers were admittedly physically and emotionally drained by a weekend road trip to upstate New York to play against Army and Cornell. The Quakers, clearly the superior team, lost both matches. Last season, Miller's Quakers went 16-10 overall and 5-4 in the EITA -- good for a fifth place finish. One of the season's highlights was a 4-3 defeat of Princeton. Miller also made contributions to the Penn program off the court. He was instrumental in the development of the Penn Conference Classic, a team tournament that brings teams from all over the country to Philly in late October, and in the creation of the Tennis Hall of Fame in Levy Pavilion, Penn's indoor courts. "He's done a good job with behind the scenes things that don't really get noticed at first glance like fund-raising and the Penn Conference Classic," senior Marc Fisicaro said. On Saturday afternoon, Miller's thoughts will not be on his departure, but rather on avenging a 4-3 loss to Columbia in early October. Columbia, 15-4 overall and 7-1 in the EITA, has lost in EITA play only to conference title and Ivy League title favorite Harvard by a score of 5-2. The Lions boast No.1, No. 2 and No. 3 singles players who are among the best for their respective ranks in the Northeast. Columbia showed some vulnerability, however, last Saturday with with a 4-3 win against Brown. The Bears are 0-5 in the Ivy League. The bottom three Lions singles players and the three doubles teams will be much easier to deal with than their top three singles players. Penn junior No. 2 singles player Urs Baertschi knows exactly what the Red and Blue need to do to snag a victory from the Lions. "Their doubles teams are not very strong," Baertschi said. "We have to win the doubles points and cash in at No. 4, No. 5 and No. 6 singles and possibly come up with an upset at one, two or three." Fisicaro, the sole senior on the team, won his match against Columbia's No. 1 player, Salil Sheshadri, 7-5, 6-4 back in October. "If I can beat the No. 1 guy, there's no reason why Urs can't beat the No. 2 guy or why Jordan [Szekely] can't beat the No. 3 guy," Fisicaro said. Fisicaro and sophomore No. 6 singles player Dominic Rioux fully agree with Baertschi on the fact that Penn's bottom lineup is much stronger than the Lions'. "Their bottom two are weaker than the top four. Their doubles is pretty weak," Rioux said. The Penn Relays will be a nuisance to the players during the match. Fisicaro played at the Lott courts during the Relays in his sophomore year. "It's very distracting when there's 60,000 people around," Fisicaro said. The Relays have even laid claim to three of the six Lott courts. The courts will be sacrificed to an interactive setup where track fans can long jump, throw shotput and engage in other track activities. Those games will cover the half of the courts closer to Franklin Field. The players will have to play with a backdrop of fans triple jumping on one end of the court and walking past on the other end. Despite all of the commotion, the players unanimously agree that the hullabaloo will not be a factor in the outcome of the match. Just as Miller will put the match first, Fisicaro will not dwell on the fact that he is playing in his last match of his career. "I'm preparing just like its another match. I'll play hard and try to win."