Zupan captures victory at Penn State Invitational

The Penn men's tennis team finished fourth in out in Happy Valley. Penn men's tennis coach Gordie Ernst claims that it is his team's cohesiveness that will get its members through the year-long tennis season. Yet, already in their first weekend of competition, the team split in two -- two tournaments, that is. While the majority of the Quakers headed to Happy Valley for the Penn State Invitational, the trio of Eric Sobotka, Ryan Harwood and Andy Kolker went to a pre-qualifier for the ITA national clay court tournament held in Baltimore. The Red and Blue presence in the Maryland contest was brief, however, as all three athletes lost their first matches in the single-elimination tournament. But while the Quakers did not bring home any trophies, the weekend was a homecoming of sorts for one of the newest additions to Penn tennis -- Andy Kolker. "Andy's from the club where the tournament was played. It's almost as if there are Andy Kolker dolls sold in that club," Ernst said jokingly. "He's been going to that club for years and he belonged in that tournament." And Kolker soon proved to Ernst just how badly he wanted to play -- and stay -- in the tournament. The freshman fell, hyper-extending his elbow, yet battled through the pain to finish his match. While Kolker was busy impressing Ernst with his hungry play at one tournament, Joey Zupan was doing the same at another. Zupan, together with teammates Brett Meringoff, Brian Barki, Jared Corby, Fanda Stejskl, Rob Pringle and Kevin Strouse, spent the weekend facing seven other schools at the Penn State Invitational. All the Quakers competed in both singles and doubles, with the exception of Strouse, who played only singles. Some of the Quakers put together impressive singles performances, including Stejskl, who lost a hard-fought 7-5, 7-5 match against the No. 1 player from St. John's, Jaidep Shetty. Yet only Zupan won his flight, going undefeated in singles play. "Joey played great. He's finally starting to play up to his potential. He beat some good players and he's playing like the athlete that he is," Ernst said. "If he's willing to show the commitment, he can be one of our best players." Zupan's victory was not the lone bright spot this weekend for the Quakers. While last season the doubles point consistently plagued the Red and Blue in dual matches, the team of co-captain Meringoff and Stejskl, a transfer from the Czech Republic, put together a performance good enough for fourth place in Happy Valley. "It was my first time playing with Fanda and I think we were pretty happy with the way we were playing together by the end of the weekend," Meringoff said. "Last year I think we put ourselves at a disadvantage by not doing well in doubles. So this year we're going to put some more effort into practicing our doubles." Ernst has not finalized his doubles teams and in fact is still in the trial and error stage with his pairings. However, with no prior experience together, the success Meringoff and Stejskl experienced -- coupled with the team's intent to focus more on doubles -- bodes well for the future. After only one week of practice, though, one tournament is certainly no predictor of how the Quakers will fare this season. The team itself remains cautious, preferring to focus not on their play this weekend but on priming for the start of the ECAC season. "Any wins that we had at this tournament we can't get too excited about and we can't get too down about any losses," Zupan said. "We just have to look at it more for the preparation we're getting for our season."