W. Tennis happy with doubles in wins

Against Princeton last Saturday, less-than-stellar doubles play did in the Penn women's tennis team. The Red and Blue seemed to learn their lesson, however, as the Quakers went undefeated in doubles this weekend in two victories on the road at Brown and Yale. Penn (10-9, 2-1 Ivy League) breezed by the Bears (1-12, 0-2) on Friday, not allowing the home side to win a single match in Providence, R.I. None of the matches were even close -- in all six of their singles matches, the Quakers never let more than three games slip in any set. At No. 1 singles, Penn junior Lenka Beranova pulled off a 6-1, 6-1 win against Brown's Maria Elena del Valle, while Penn junior Shubha Srinivasan dominated the Bears' Jeanine Baillie and took her No. 2 singles match, 6-3, 6-0. Senior co-captain Anastasia Pozdniakova was equally dominant at No. 3 singles, winning her match, 6-1, 6-0. After Louani Bascara, Jolene Sloat and Justyna Wojas completed the singles sweep of the Bears, Penn had already won the match -- but there was no decline in the Red and Blue's dominance when it came time for the doubles showdowns, for the Quakers had practiced in pairs more heavily than usual during the week. "Having known that you won singles and knowing doubles doesn't count, there sometimes is a letdown," Bascara said. At Brown, though, the Red and Blue's momentum didn't falter. In the top spot in doubles, the duo of Beranova and senior co-captain Elana Gold easily took their match, 8-4. Bascara and Pozdniakova skated through to an 8-1 win at No. 2 doubles, while Srinivasan and sophomore Sloat swept their foes, 8-0, at No. 3 doubles. Last spring, the Bears (1-12, 0-2) gave Penn more of a challenge -- the teams split singles before Penn took all of its doubles sets to win the match. "[Brown was] drastically worse than last year," Penn senior co-captain Gold said. "We got on them early, and they folded really quickly." In all fairness, Brown is a very young team. After losing four of last year's starters to graduation and injury, freshmen alone make up half of the Bears' roster. While Gold believes Brown left the Quakers "well-rested" for their match against Yale on Saturday, Penn's victory over the Elis wasn't nearly as easy as the Brown match was. Singles victories from Beranova, Pozdniakova, Sloat and sophomore Rochelle Raiss -- who competed while she had a bad case of the flu -- brought the Quakers to a 4-2 lead before the doubles matches. Penn needed only one doubles victory to ensure a match win over the Elis, but that was no certainty. "It's difficult and rare for a team to come back being [down 2-4]," Bascara said. "But by the same token, it's difficult to close out a match like that. "After having lost all our doubles to Princeton and having seen the style they play -- which is basically all power and [aggression] -- that urged us to step it up a notch in terms of aggressiveness. We were up at the net, closing and being aggressive. That's how it was on most of the courts that day." Beating the Elis in doubles was not as hard as it was against Princeton, but it was still no easy task -- and the effort required some of the Quakers' best tennis of the entire season. Gold and Srinivasan's 8-5 victory at No. 3 doubles wrapped up the victory in the match for Penn, while their teammates continued to battle the Elis on the first two doubles courts. After starting their match down 4-0, Raiss and Beranova fought their way to an 8-6 win at No. 1 doubles, while Bascara and Pozdniakova finished with the same score at No. 2 doubles. The win brought Penn to 2-1 in the Ancient Eight, meaning that the Quakers are still in contention for the league title, but they must beat both Harvard and Dartmouth at home this weekend.

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