W. Tennis drops final match, Ivy League crown to Harvard

The Penn women's tennis team's season ended in disappointment with a 6-1 loss to Harvard on Saturday in a battle of Ivy League unbeatens.

After an impressive shutout victory Friday at Dartmouth, in which the Quakers (15-5, 6-1 Ivy) did not surrender a set, Penn was ready for the biggest day of the season -- its final match at Harvard for the Ivy League championship.

No. 18 Harvard (17-3, 7-0) was also fresh off an impressive victory, a 6-1 defeat of Princeton, proved to be Penn's most formidable opponent in the Ivy League. It was a make-or-break situation in which the winner would win the league and the loser would go home disappointed, Penn was both poised and excited.

"We were anxious to compete," freshman Raluca Ciochina said. "We were very pumped up and confident."

The Quakers entered with numerous reasons for that confidence. First, they had experience. The Quakers, two-time defending Ivy champs, were big-match tested. Penn was the older, more veteran-run team, led by two juniors and a senior in Alice Pirsu, Nicole Ptak and Raluca Ciulei.

However, Harvard's home-court advantage proved to be crucial. The Crimson entered Saturday's match with an impressive 5-0 record at the Beren Tennis Center, which showed.

"They definitely had a large and rowdy crowd," sophomore Michelle Yeh said. "It was unlike anything we had seen before."

This advantage, among others, contributed to a dominant performance by Harvard, who for the first time in three years was able to take the Ivy League crown from Penn.

While the Quakers started off strong in doubles, winning all three matches, they were unable to carry this momentum to the singles half of the match. The Crimson swept the singles matches 6-0 with a series of impressive victories. Harvard dominated the Quakers in a way that many of Penn athletes had not seen in their entire college careers.

In the matchup of two of the Ivy League's best players, No. 20 Pirsu and No. 43 Courtney Bergman of Harvard, expectations were tremendous in what was projected to be one of the better matches of the year. Anticlimactically, Bergman dominated Pirsu and won easily in straight sets, 6-4, 6-1.

Saturday simply was not Penn's day. Even in matches that appeared as good as won, the Quakers were unable to persevere. Penn's No. 4 singles player Shelah Chao was up a set and 5-0 in the second set with two match points against Harvard's No. 72 Eva Wang, only to be ousted in three sets.

The Quakers were also on the short end of two other three-set matches as No. 2 Ptak and No. 3 Ciulei won the first sets of their respective matches, only to fall short in the end.

The Harvard match also brings to an end the Ivy League career of Ciulei. Ciulei, a transfer from Virginia Commonwealth, had an impressive two-year run with the Quakers. A second-team all-Ivy selection last year, Ciulei will probably find herself receiving a similar honor this year.

With the Ivy League title as its main goal since the beginning of the season, the second-place finish was a letdown for Penn. Still, the Quakers were satisfied with their season.

"We thought the season went really well," Yeh said. "We lost to the 18th team in the country, but hopefully we will make NCAAs."

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