M. Tennis dominated by Big Ten schools

The Penn men's tennis team struggled again at home this weekend. Although the fall season's results have not been inspiring, Penn coach Gordie Ernst and the men's tennis team are remaining optimistic about the spring. At this weekend's Penn Conference Championships, however, the draw sheet left little for the Quakers to celebrate. While the event was held at Penn's Lott Tennis Courts, it might as well have been in the midwest. The tournament was dominated by players from the Big Ten, especially Minnesota and Northwestern. Tom Chicoine of the Golden Gophers defeated the Wildcats' Doug Bohaboy for the title, 6-2, 6-3. Northwestern's Brad Erickson won the consolation bracket, defeating Penn's Steven Rodway, 6-1, 6-4 in an early-round match. In the consolation bracket, Penn won three matches, but two came against other members of the Red and Blue. One Quaker, senior captain Jordan Szekely, progressed to the backdraw's quarter-final round, losing to Northwestern's Martin Bengston, 6-4, 6-4. "I'm still very happy," said Ernst, who was an assistant coach last year at Northwestern. "The guys are improving." "It's not as poor a performance as it seems," said Penn sophomore Eric Sobotka, who lost 6-3, 6-4 in the second round against Penn State's Mike Griesser. "If you look at the teams in this tournament, you've got teams that are in the top 20 to top 25 in the country playing. Right now we're building, but the results are improving." Penn's lineup this weekend featured four freshmen, as well as a transfer student and a sophomore who did not play last year. Describing his team as "very inexperienced," Ernst emphasized that the fall season is mainly a tune up for the more important spring season. Acknowledging the lack of success on the scoreboards thus far, Ernst said that "as I see it, our record right now is 0-0." The players also see the spring and its team matches as more important, and most of them are already into the off-season, as only Sobotka and Szekely will represent the Red and Blue at next weekend's Rolex Championships. "The spring is where we get down [to business]. The offseason is going to be crucial," Sobotka said. "The commitment to the dual matches in the spring is different. It's team oriented. The practices [will be] harder [in the off-season] to get guys to orient themselves with the program. "Two years ago, Penn beat the crap out of Dartmouth in the ECAC Championships, but who got the [Ivy League championship] ring?" Sobotka asked. "Nobody remembers what happened at the ECAC or the Penn Conference Classic or any of it," he said said, further stressing the importance of the team-focused spring season over the individual-focused fall season. "When it comes down to the spring, that's where this work is going to pay off. You can't expect a team with five or six new faces to all of a sudden go out and beat a team like Princeton that has two juniors and two seniors in its starting lineup," he said. One of those new faces, of course, is Ernst, who describes the change for the team and for himself as "a big adjustment." His philosophy has been to keep the fun in tennis, saying that "you can never lose your sense of humor." The attitude has rubbed off on the players, who have noticed a change from the final days of the Gene Miller era. "If you could see the practices last year, they were totally different," Sobotka said. "Now, every single guy, from what I've seen, is out there having fun. Gordie's different. He's a coach, and he's a friend. It's created a lot more respect. "There's energy and there's intensity, and when you go to take a water break, guys can joke around. Back on the court, though, everyone knows their place. The difference in practices this year [is] clear." While practices have been better, the results have not been there in tournaments. Noting the inexperience of the team, Ernst said it's okay for the Red and Blue to struggle early because they will have a better sense of what the competition is down the road. The team is excited to show the competition what it has learned after the off-season, as the opposition's expectations should be minimal. Sobotka likens the team to Temple's football squad, which recently defeated a highly-ranked Virginia Tech team, after losing eleven consecutive games. "No one thinks that we can do well," Sobotka said. "We're going to exceed expectations. You can't ask guys to play opponents a hundred spots above them in three weeks. If they work hard and they believe they can do it in three months, they'll beat 'em. That's legit. They can do it and they will do it." Ernst recognizes that the Quakers have one of the lower ranked teams in the Ivy League, but he is ready for the building process that lies ahead. "I came here to create. Benjamin Franklin was a creative thinker. This school was founded on creativity, and not fearing a chance to build something. That's why I came here. To build a program," he said.