M. Tennis has no luck in N.J.

For the second straight weekend, the Penn men's tennis team travelled to Princeton. And for the second straight weekend, the Quakers came up short of expectations. Penn was unable to overcome powerful Ivy foe Princeton in the ECAC Tournament this past weekend. The No. 13 seeded Quakers fell 7-0 to the No. 3 seeded Tigers in the first round. Princeton then advanced to the semifinals of the 16 team field before falling to Harvard, the No. 1 seed. The previous weekend, Penn competed in the Princeton Fall Invitational and was disappointed in its performance in the individual tournament. Only one Penn player, sophomore Eric Sobotka, advanced past the first round in that tournament. The Quakers, who fell to the Tigers 5-2 in last year's head-to-head match, will have a chance to avenge the match in the spring season, when they return to the Lenz Tennis Center on April 3. Penn head coach Gordie Ernst was impressed with his No. 1 singles player, Sobotka, who lost a tight match to Princeton's Kyle Kliegerman, 6-4, 6-3. "Kliegerman's one of the toughest players in the Ivy League, and [Sobotka] gave him a heck of a fight. It was a very close match," Ernst said. Kliegerman was coming off of an impressive Fall Invitational in which he won the main singles draw in front of his home crowd. The singles matches got no easier for Penn. Jordan Szekely, a senior co-captain and the No. 2 singles player for the Quakers, lost 6-0, 6-4. Junior Brett Meringoff was bested by a score of 6-0, 6-3 and freshman Brian Barki was stopped 6-3, 6-3. Junior Mike Klatsky fell 6-3, 6-3 in his singles match, and number six Uday Garg was trimmed, 6-3, 7-5. "Princeton's a good team, and we're just not ready yet," Ernst said. "On a positive note, we saw our competition, and hopefully we can use this as a motivator," he added. Klatsky and Dominic Rioux provided Penn with its sole win, an 8-6 victory at first doubles. However, the Tigers came away with the other two doubles match and hence the doubles point to add to their six singles wins. In doubles scoring, the point goes to the team that wins two of the three matches. "Our doubles looked pretty good, and we're still missing one of our best players in Joey Zupan," Ernst noted. Zupan, a sophomore, is out with a shoulder injury. The doubles win was a big one for Klatsky and Rioux, who dropped an 8-6 decision to Kliegerman and Jeff Schacter the previous weekend. While Ernst drew some encouragement from the match, he is far from satisfied. "We still need better effort out of some of the older guys to lead the freshmen," Ernst said. "We have to make tennis a serious commitment just to be able to compete with some of these teams. Once we do, I'm confident we're going to be in there fighting for every match."