Meet Martina and Anna.
No, not Navratilova and Kournikova, the European tennis stars.
Martina and Anna Carter (no relation), a couple of Penn volleyball players better known by their real first names -- Stacey and Lauren, respectively.
Each obtained her seemingly random nickname during high school and club volleyball.
"When I was a sophomore in high school, my coach was trying to fix my armswing," said Stacey, a pre-med student. "It was a lot like a tennis armswing because I started playing tennis before I played volleyball. She was so frustrated and finally said, `You know what? It's not going to work.'
"So she started calling me Martina, after Martina Navratilova."
Lauren, too, developed her nickname because of a problem on the court that she couldn't correct.
"One day in practice in ninth grade [my coach] started yelling at me for not moving," the College sophomore said. "I was so tired, and I didn't want to move at all. He said, `Do I have to speak another language? Do I have to speak German to you? Is your name Anna?' I was like, `Anna?'
"And it stuck -- for four years! And he still calls me Anna."
Stacey managed to get her college teammates to call her by her real first name.
But Lauren wasn't so successful.
"When I came here, there was Stacey Carter and Lauren Purdo," said Lauren, a native of Pacific Palisades, Calif. "Nobody liked my name, so they chose my middle name, and now I'm known as `Wiley.'"
The sport of volleyball is now, of course, a big part of each of their lives. But it wasn't always that way.
"We were a very athletic family," Stacey said. "I started playing volleyball in seventh grade, and slowly, the other sports became less and less important and I pretty much [solely] focused on volleyball in high school."
Lauren competed in a different sport altogether for most of her formative years.
"I started off doing gymnastics and was very competitive for about 10 years," Lauren said. "Eventually, in eighth grade, I got a little too tall [for gymnastics], so I tried out other sports."
But, for a long time, volleyball was not on her list.
"I refused to play volleyball," Lauren said. "My mom wanted me to go, but I was like, `No way, I'm never doing that.' Finally, I decided to try it in ninth grade. I started playing club and high school, and I loved it."
The similarities between the two don't stop there. Both are right-side hitters for Penn but hit outside in high school.
"They're both doing really well [at right-side hitter]," Penn coach Kerry Major said. "But I know in the back of my mind that they have these other talents [as well], and that's what makes them so great.
"They can go in any position and know what to do with the ball."
And Stacey and Lauren came to Penn for very similar reasons. Both saw Penn as an opportunity to be in a big city, play with a close-knit team and go somewhere different.
All that they had expected when they arrived at Penn -- Stacey in 1999 and Lauren in 2000 -- was fulfilled, especially from a volleyball standpoint.
"Immediately, when I got here, I had 15 best friends," said Lauren, who is considering a career in sports medicine. "It's not even just that we all play together and hang out together, we also all live together. This is so much more than just a team or friends. They're all my sisters, and we're all really close."
But Stacey and Lauren -- who both describe themselves as "relaxed and easy-going" -- have close friends outside the volleyball circle, too, who speak very highly of them.
"She's bubbly, always upbeat, and whenever you are down, she's there to make you laugh," Villanova freshman and former Gene's Team club volleyball teammate Jennifer Badran-Grycan wrote of Lauren in an e-mail.
Stacey, on the other hand, is a little bit more quiet, except when she is around her friends.
"She can be kind of quiet and a little bit reserved, but when she gets more comfortable, she tends to open up more," said College junior Amanda Sadacca, who was Stacey's roommate freshman year and is now her Chemistry lab partner. "It's really easy to talk to her.
"She's one of those people that puts you at ease."
College junior Ben Phillips agreed.
"Stacey's just a warm person, and she's got a healthy soul," Phillips said.
The similarities between these two players on and off the court would almost make you think that they are sisters, not players trying to get playing time at the same position.
And perhaps that's what makes the friendship of the two Carters with tennis-player nicknames unique.
