M. Tennis meets Ivies at the Princeton Fall Invitational

Hard work pays off sooner or later. For Penn coach Gordie Ernst and the men's tennis team, it was sooner. After dominating the Tim Berman Invitational at Swarthmore nearly two weeks ago, the team is confident that it will have a very successful season. This weekend, the Quakers will travel to New Jersey for the Princeton Fall Invitational. This is the tournament, Ernst believes, that will be a true measure of how well Penn can match up against the other Ivy League contenders. With every other Ivy team making the trip, the match play promises to be nothing short of sensational, if trying. This weekend and beyond, however, the team will have to lift the level of its intensity several notches when facing the perennial tennis powerhouses of the Ancient Eight. Ernst and his team know that they simply can't match up on paper with the Harvards, Yales and Princetons of the world. "We have a bunch of guys that will, without a doubt, need to raise their dedication level," Ernst said. "They are going to love being the underdogs. Coming away with a victory will make it all the sweeter." Unfortunately, with the departure of first singles player Marc Fisicaro due to graduation and the early exit of top players Urs Baertschi, Adam Harris and Udi Kisch, the team desperately needs to fill a deep hole in its roster. Yet this is only half the story. The other half lies within the recruiting ranks. What makes Harvard, Yale and Princeton so unbelievably talented at tennis and Kentucky and North Carolina so dominating at collegiate basketball are the athletic resources each school provides for its players. "Penn simply doesn't have the resources to give the financial aid to its tennis recruits that other schools may supply to their top prospects," Ernst said. Tennis is a global sport, and yet there remains a deficiency in the foreign talent level on the Penn squad compared to other Ivy League teams. That is what puts a team like Harvard, which acquired John Doran, the top player in Ireland this year, levels above Penn on paper. And this is the difficulty the men will face this weekend. "We need to attract some of the best talent from not just the United States, but worldwide," Ernst said. The reality is that Penn, like the other Ivies, is an academic haven and yet a financial horror for hundreds of international tennis phenoms. What it comes down to for most foreign prospects is the price of tuition. "If we have everybody competing for the common goal, it doesn't matter how we match up against any team on paper. Hard work wins tennis matches," Ernst said. As Ernst leads his young squad into a Princeton tournament filled with some of the top juniors around, he hopes his team comes away gaining some valuable experience for the upcoming Ivy dual matches.