W. Tennis defeated on home courts

This past weekend in the ITA East Regional Tennis Championships at Levy Pavilion the Penn women's tennis team not only showed little fight in defending their home courts but had such a disappointing performance that it forced them to revamp their entire doubles lineup. The Quakers' doubles team of Karen Ridley and Julia Feldman, both seniors and captains, as well as the duo of Penn senior tri-captain Brooke Herman and junior Elana Gold, proved to be too gracious of hosts, and their partnerships are now a thing of the past. The Quakers' doubles teams were aiming for a bid into the ITA National Indoor Championship in Dallas, Texas in February but lost before they gained any momentum. Both Quakers teams were unable to advance beyond the second round. "I am a little disappointed in the doubles play this weekend. We seem a little sloppy and just not in there at all," Penn coach Michael Dowd said. "It is basically back to the drawing board on doubles." The team of Ridley and Feldman fell to Selin Nassi and Christina Causway of Boston University 8-5. Herman and Gold did not fare much better as they were defeated by the eventual champions Delphine Troch and Carolijn van Rossum from William & Mary 8-1. "It came down to one or two points where they got some lucky gets on points that we had set up pretty well," Feldman said. Unfortunately for the Quakers, the rest of the team followed the trend set by the doubles teams. Both Ridley and Feldman were defeated in second round singles play, by Lenka Zacharova of Virginia Commonwealth 6-4,6-2 and Shareen Lai from Syracuse 6-2,6-2, respectively. "We are just as good as any of those teams there, but when we get to those big points, we never seem to be able to get them," Feldman said. "Maybe it just comes down to confidence and believing that we can be a top-30 team in the nation and beat those big-name teams." Perhaps the most surprising defeat of the tournament for the Quakers was No. 3 seed Anastasia Pozdniakova's loss in the quarterfinals to 13th seeded Tari Ann Toro from William and Mary 4-6, 6-2, 6-4. "I think it all comes down to individual determination in the end," Pozdniakova said. "If you did that and in the end you still lost, then the other player was just better than you and you have to accept it." Dowd attributed much of his team's performance to the letdown that occurred after the ECAC Championships three weeks ago. "I think we had our peak at the ECAC's, and that is what we wanted," Dowd said. "That is what we were aiming for, but three weeks of not competing is a long time and then to have to come out here and play in this tough of a tournament is a lot to ask." The eventual singles champion was Carolijn van Roosum, who defeated Brown's Saranga Sanakkara 6-3, 6-7(4), 6-3 to become the first player in tournament history to win both the singles and doubles at the same championships, according to Brown women's tennis coach Norma Taylor. Although the Quakers were not around long enough to see much of it, the tournament was an overall success. "I think Michael Dowd did an impressive job. The scheduling was very fair to the players," Taylor said. "They also had a nice hospitality table for the players which I have never seen before at this tournament." Hopefully next time the Quakers can stick around long enough to enjoy a couple more days of free food.