W. Tennis prepares for toughest test of fall season

The Quakers will compete with 16 of the top teams in the East at the ECAC Championships at Rutgers and Princeton. Pro football teams have the Super Bowl. Baseball teams have the World Series. And even though it might not be as publicized, the Penn women's tennis team has the ECAC Championships. This afternoon, nine Quakers will head to Princeton and Rutgers to compete against the top 16 women's tennis teams on the East Coast. Among the teams they will face are Virginia, Boston College and all seven other Ivy League schools. Although the competition will be fierce, Penn coach Michael Dowd is confident that the Quakers will be successful. "We're the highest nationally ranked team in this tournament," he said of the 48th-ranked Quakers. "We have to keep proving that we deserve this respect and I think we're in a position to do well." The ECACs will be the first team competition of Penn's fall season. The tournament consists of dual matches, meaning that when two teams face each other they will compete to reach seven points. The team that wins two out of three doubles matches receives the doubles point, while the other six points come from singles results. Last year, the Quakers reached the semifinals before falling to Virginia 5-2. The Cavaliers ultimately lost to Virginia Tech, as the Hokies swept their state rivals to win the championship for the first time in school history. Although the Quakers generally regard their fall season as less important than the spring -- when the team competes for the Ivy title -- the ECACs are the season's biggest event. The Cissie Leary Invitational, held on September 24, and the Penn State Invitational, held two weeks ago, comprise the extent of Penn's matchplay this season. Penn junior Jill Mazza believes the two invitationals helped to prepare the team for this weekend. "[The ECACs] are a bigger deal than the other two," Mazza said. "[The Invitationals] helped relax us and get used to match play." The Penn State Invitational pointed out the need for doubles improvement, especially since doubles are important in dual matches. In the last two weeks of practice, the team has been concentrating on doubles play. "A lot of these matches come down to doubles," senior co-captain Anastasia Pozdniakova said. "I believe we have a lot of good singles players on the team. It's taken us a while to get the right doubles combinations together." Pozdniakova, who won both of her singles matches in last year's ECACs, hopes to repeat her feat. "It's hard to predict [results] because you don't know how the draw will turn out," she said. Whereas the season's invitationals were individual tournaments, the ECACs are a team competition. Each player's match contributes to the team score in the quest for the ECAC title. Penn junior Lenka Beranova feels more comfortable playing team matches. "I don't feel more pressure," she said. "You have team members behind you and it's a lot more fun because everyone is doing the same thing." "The expectations [in a dual match] are different," Pozdniakova said. "At the end of the day you could have lost all your matches but the team won, so you're happy." This weekend's competition is among Penn's last matches of the season. After this weekend, the Quakers will not compete again until November 6 at the ITA Eastern Regionals in Cambridge, Mass. The ECACs results will likely affect the team's confidence for the spring season, when Ivy competition begins. The Quakers, however, aren't worried. "We're ready," Beranova said. "And we're going to kick butt."