After last season, the members of the Penn women's tennis team have a legacy to defend.
Last season, the Quakers won the Ivy League title for the first time in Penn history, ripping through the Ivy League with a perfect 7-0 record.
Bolstered by the monumental championship and a stirring upset of Pepperdine in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last year, the Quakers have ascended to a preseason ranking of No. 42 in the nation.
And to make the season even more promising, Penn is one of only two Ivy teams to have a player ranked in the nation's Top 25 -- Alice Pirsu.
The Quakers, however, are hesitant to allow themselves to think it will all come as easily this season as it did last year.
"We are very focused on repeating as Ivy champs," Rachel Shweky said. "And we know that our main threat is Harvard."
In the ECAC Tournament, Harvard humiliated the Red and Blue, 7-0. Most surprising was the Crimson's No. 21 Courtney Bergman's defeat ofPirsu -- the No. 24 ranked player in the nation and a former ranked player in the professional WTA.
Sophomore captain Sanela Kunovac -- 25-11 for the Quakers in last season's stellar season -- discounts the loss.
"What happens in fall tournaments does not predict what is to come in the spring," she said. "We have a lot of new players and were testing out lineups."
The experimentation was for good reason, as the Quakers have only three players returning from last season. The team is almost wholly comprised of freshmen and sophomores.
"Normally a school would call this a rebuilding year," she said. "But when we have sophomores who just won a championship, we have leaders to strengthen this team."
Shweky is also willing to discount the early season losses as nothing more than a learning process.
"We view that loss against Harvard as motivation," she said. "Now we have gotten to know and like each other."
With Old Dominion looming as Penn's first opponent, the Quakers must rebound quickly from their fall struggles to compete against the nation's No. 35 ranked team.
Though the Monarchs own a high ranking, Penn is unfazed by the competition.
"We are aware that our first opponent, Old Dominion, is a tough team," Shweky said. "But we could match up against anyone."
The Red and Blue's confidence, in spite of their fall struggles, comes from the fact that they are a tight-knit team.
"People think of tennis as an individual sport and some teams play that way," freshman Shela Chao said. "But we really play as a team... and we are basically all freshmen and sophomores. In a couple more years with these players it will be unbelievable."
Kunovac too sees success coming from the Quakers. However, Penn's second-year star is willing to put a much shorter time table on it than Chao.
"We have to take one game at a time," she said. "But I think we could shoot to be a top 30 team."
