The Penn women's tennis team continued its dominance of the Ivy League on Saturday, defeating one of its chief rivals in Princeton at the Levy Tennis Pavilion, 6-1.
After starting off the season with two impressive wins over Columbia and Cornell, the Quakers appeared very excited to take on Princeton.
"It's so intense," said junior Rachel Shweky, who captured a victory at No. 2 doubles. "We started off really strong against Cornell and Columbia and so now we are really pumped."
The energy on the team was obvious from the beginning of the match. Penn opened winning all three of its doubles matches, led by Alice Pirsu and Raluca Ciulei -- the duo won easily at No. 1 doubles over Princeton's Kavitha Krishnamurthy and Neha Uberoi, 8-1.
The Quakers carried the momentum from their doubles victories into the singles matches.
Raluca Ciulei dominated Princeton's No. 3 singles player Allison Hashmall in a lopsided 6-0,6-2, victory.
Ciulei was able to exploit her tremendous forehand to overpower Hashmall.
"I played really well," Ciulei said. "I was well prepared as was the whole team."
In an equally impressive victory, Penn's No. 4 singles player Shelah Chao fought to defeat Princeton's Stephanie Berg, 6-4,7-6(7-1). While Chao started slowly she was able to rebuild her focus and persevere.
"Watching Nicky got me back into it," said Chao, referring to junior Nicole Ptak, who was playing on the next court.
Ptak, or the Ptak attack as some of her fans would yell, came out of the shoot strong against Princeton's top player, No. 52 Neha Uberoi.
Ptak dominated the Princeton freshman in the first set, 6-2. Uberoi, however, proved too strong in the end, overcoming Ptak in the second set, 6-2, and then in a third-set tiebreak.
Uberoi was able to win the ten point tiebreaker at the end of the third set. Since Penn had clinched the win, by rule, any match that had its first two sets split would then go to the tiebreak.
Despite the loss, Princeton's Uberoi was pleased with the overall environment.
"The atmosphere is not like other matches," Uberoi said. " I just tried to go out there and play like it was any other match."
In a similar third-set tiebreaker, Penn's No. 1 singles player Pirsu was able to overcome Krishnamurthy, 5-7, 6-2, 1-0. The battle of two of the Ivy League's best No. 1s was everything it was built up to be as the two went back and forth featuring tremendous baseline rallies.
In the end, Pirsu proved too strong as it became apparent that the smaller Krishnamurthy had fatigued.
"I played really well," Pirsu said. "She's a great player and we always have great matches. I love playing her.
"And I love winning."
As with other matches throughout the year, once a Penn player finished her match, she went to cheer on her teammates.
Fittingly, the final remaining match was the Pirsu-Krishnamurthy battle, and the support that Pirsu's teammates were giving was noticeable. In one instance right before the tiebreak, Alice yelled to her watching teammates, "What are we going to do?"
To which the women responded, "Close it," -- which Pirsu was able to do.
"It's a really tight knit group on and off the court and it showed," Penn coach Mike Dowd said. "We came out firing from the first point of doubles to the last point of this match."
Penn looked imposing Saturday and appears to be well on its way to another Ivy League Crown.
Shelah Chao summed the day up perfectly with a certain team slogan when she said, "Three down, four to go -- another one bites the dust."
