M. Tennis wins at Dartmouth, falls to Harvard

Penn missed a good chance to move up in the Ivy League race. The third time was certainly a charm for the Penn men's tennis team on Saturday when it beat Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H. Unfortunately for Penn, there's no adage about a fourth time, as the Quakers fell to Harvard, 1-6, on Sunday in Cambridge, Mass., breaking their three-match Ivy winning streak. Penn (11-9, 3-2 Ivy) began its day against Dartmouth by sweeping all three doubles matches. Although the courts were lined by a large number of Dartmouth students, the Quakers managed to keep their concentration and defeat their opponents. The notable exceptions were at the No. 1 and No. 5 positions, with Fanda Stejskal and Joey Zupan both losing. Stejskal had been favored to win his match, and Zupan suffered his first Ivy League singles defeat this year. However, the rest of the Penn team was able to make up the difference, as the Red and Blue glided past the Big Green 5-2. "Fanda and Joey Zupan lost, but other guys like Rob Pringle and Brian Barki stepped up," Penn coach Gordie Ernst said. "It was a good team victory. We were the favorite for the first time, and we played like it." The Quakers took the momentum from their three-game winning streak to Cambridge, but were unable to manage a win over the Crimson. Penn only won one doubles match at the No. 3 position, with Pringle and Brett Meringoff defeating William Lee and Dalibor Snyder. Penn did not perform well in singles either, with only a singles win by Stejskal in the top spot. Stejskal defeated John Doran, 6-4, 6-1. His win was in stark contrast to the defeat of the previous day, especially since Doran is considered one of the best players in the Ivy League. "I started off really bad. I was told that he played a big game, and I expected him to be like Sampras and for him to kill me," Stejskal said. "I thought I was going to have to play like Agassi to beat him. I was down three-love; I had lost my serve; and then I decided to play my own game and I killed him. "I still think we had a shot at Harvard, and the results sound kind of brutal, but I think it was a lot more even than that." Despite the loss to Harvard, Penn's season so far has shown the Ivy League that the Quakers are not the team they were a year ago. Already 4-2 in the Eastern Intercollegiate Tennis League, Penn has turned the tables on teams like Dartmouth -- the Quakers lost 1-6 at home to the Big Green last year. "The team commitment at the start of the year that they were going to hold each other responsible for missed practices and missed runs and that they were not going to accept mediocre work effort -- that's been the difference," Ernst said. "There were guys last year who brought the whole team down. I got rid of them. Now we have a true team attitude, and we have a true care for the results of the matches. My job is to remind them how bad it felt to lose to these teams last year." Although Penn was unable to defeat Harvard on Sunday, the Quakers will have another chance to prove that they have advanced to the upper echelon of the league when they face Columbia on Friday. "The unfortunate thing is that we went to Harvard with confidence, but we didn't play well. A lot of people went out there and played not to lose instead of playing to win," Ernst said. "Columbia has beaten everyone except us and Princeton, and when we play them we have to play to win. We can do it, and there is no pressure. But we have to play to win."

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