W. Tennis navigated tough road

The Quakers had a good season despite facing their toughest opponents in history. Schedules don't get much harder than the one the Penn women's tennis team faced this spring. While the Quakers found familiar opponents -- such as Drexel and Penn State -- among the 23 teams they challenged over the last three months, the Red and Blue faced more nationally ranked teams this season than they ever had before. For the first time in history, the Quakers went up against the likes of No. 1 Stanford, No. 23 Clemson and No. 32 Georgia Tech as they prepared for their Ivy season, which began on April 1. "We challenged ourselves with the schedule," senior co-captain Elana Gold said. "We were able to rise to another level because we played really tough teams." Even before they got to the powerhouses, the Quakers were off to a shaky start in late January. After opening its schedule with a 7-2 win over Temple on January 26, Penn balanced close losses to Virginia, Richmond and Penn State with landslide wins over Drexel, Army and Seton Hall. For spring break, the Quakers headed to Las Vegas and California, where they faced a string of five nationally-ranked schools. Penn started its trip with impressive wins over No. 72 UNLV and No. 31 Illinois State in Las Vegas on consecutive days. A few days later, the Quakers suffered a disappointing 6-3 loss to No. 48 Oklahoma State before heading to California. Penn fell 9-0 to both of its West Coast opponents, No. 38 Fresno State and No. 1 Stanford -- arguably the toughest teams on the Quakers' schedule. Even though they were shutouts, both matches were closer than their final scores. Several Quakers had close individual matches. At Fresno, Penn senior co-captain Anastasi Pozdniakova took her opponent to three sets. Shubha Srinivasan did the same against Stanford's Gabriela Lastra, ranked No. 68 in the country. "Overall, we improved in match toughness [over spring break]," Penn junior Lenka Beranova said. "Playing nationally ranked teams gave us experience and helped us do as well as we did in the Ivies." After facing such a high level of competition over break, the Quakers breezed through their final two matches before the Ivy season -- against Boston College and Rutgers -- upon their return to West Philadelphia. Penn dropped its first Ivy match to Princeton, the eventual Ancient Eight champ, on April 1. The Quakers then had a three-match Ivy winning streak, overcoming Brown, Yale and Dartmouth by the impressive scores of 9-0, 7-2 and 7-2, respectively. The Quakers' next test was Harvard, the league's defending champion, on April 15. The match score was tied at three-all after singles, but the Crimson overpowered Penn in doubles, taking the two matches it needed to win. Last weekend, Penn won its last two matches of the season, overcoming tough, young teams from Columbia and Cornell. Gold believes that the Columbia match -- won by the Penn duo of Pozdniakova and Louani Bascara in a tiebreaker -- was one of the highlights of the season. "The Columbia match was very intense and exciting," she said. "It came down to two points. It was very dramatic." Penn's 5-2 record earned the Quakers a third-place Ivy finish. "Every Ivy match was close, and [that's] a testament to how good the Ivy League has become," Gold said. "There was no school that was a complete walkover. In the past years there have definitely been teams that were weaker than other teams in the League. It [made] the chase for the title more exciting." Dowd notes the influential role that senior co-captains Gold and Pozdniakova played in the Quakers' victories. "They [were] responsible for the success of the team, especially at the beginning of the year when everyone was a little rocky," he said. "The team is as good as their leaders, and they were the leaders." "They were true captains, and their memories will be carried on forever," Beranova said. "We're losing [our] captains, but our team has enough talent to take on the positions they had and do them as well as they did."

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