W. Tennis faces tough competition at Penn St.

Jaya Kirtane won the D flight in singles competition to highlight Penn's weekend. Although the team bus got lost on the way to Pittsburgh last Thursday, the Penn women's tennis squad eventually found its way to the Penn State Invitational last weekend and was able to tie the Nittany Lions by winning a total of 16 singles matches. Teams from Penn, Penn State, Cornell, Ohio State and West Virginia spent 11-hour days on the Penn State Tennis Center courts as players competed in both singles and doubles tournaments from Friday to Sunday. The Invitational was divided into A, B, C and D flights, with the A-flight consisting of a team's top players. "We played Penn State," Penn sophomore Louani Bascara said. "Playing that high level of competition will only help us get ready for ECACs." Penn sophomore Jaya Kirtane won the D flight singles competition. Kirtane's victories included an impressive 3-6, 6-4, 6-0 comeback against Cornell's Alex Delprete. Delprete lost to another Quaker in the third round of the A singles consolation, Penn junior Shubha Srinivasan. Srinivasan ultimately fell to Cornell's Ngozi Amobi in the semifinals of the consolation bracket. Although the Quakers were playing an exhausting four matches a day over the weekend, Penn senior co-captain Elana Gold climbed to the C-flight finals before losing 6-2, 6-1 to Penn State's Teresa Whiteside. Gold also reached the doubles quarterfinals with partner Lenka Beranova. The Penn duo defeated a trash-talking pair from Ohio State before falling to West Virginia. "When [a team is] that obnoxious I get more excited to beat them," Gold said of her vocal opponents. "I take out my aggression on the tennis ball, so it works to my advantage." Although Beranova lost to Ohio State's Monica Rincon in the third round of the A-flight, she won the A singles Super Consolation by beating Cornell's Jodi Hurley. "Lenka played a really good match in the consolation final," Penn sophomore Carla Dorsey said. "There were a couple of points where her opponent raised her game to compete against her but Lenka responded really well and raised her game, too." The Invitational marks the Quakers' last formal competition until the ECAC Championships, which will be held on October 15-17 at Princeton and Rutgers. Many Quakers saw the weekend as a last chance to get in formal matchplay before the ECACs, which are generally regarded as the most important competition of the fall season. "I think I'd improved since last weekend," Gold said. "I'm hoping to peak at ECACs." Penn coach Michael Dowd said he believes the Invitational emphasized what the Quakers need to work on before ECACs. "I don't think we're ready for ECACs now," Dowd said. "We need to polish up our doubles and we need to work on our confidence. We need a good couple weeks of practice." The tournament allowed the Quakers to experiment with the team lineup. Bascara and junior Jill Mazza, a transfer from the University of Rochester, played together for the first time last weekend and reached the semifinals in their doubles flight. "Jill and I had very good chemistry on the court, which I think was apparent by our results," Bascara said. Bascara and Gold believe the four-day trip brought the team closer together. Team unity will be especially important in the spring season, when the Quakers will compete as a team for the Ivy title. "Even though [the Invitational] was an individual tournament, I always had someone at my match cheering for me and so did everyone else," Bascara said. "We want to build that spirit of togetherness that we need to pull off victories."