The Penn women's tennis team won its Ivy League season opener for the second year in a row.
The team headed up to the Big Apple to take on Ancient Eight rival Columbia. The Quakers got off to a strong start to the Ivy season, winning 5-2.
It was a typical day for the team leaders, with all the starters compiling impressive score lines in the singles department.
"Nikky Ptak, Raluca Ciochina and Sara Schiffman all had a great day," Penn coach Michael Dowd said. "They just played well; they all won in straight sets."
However, the fashion in which the Quakers (11-3, 1-0 Ivy) won the match was in no way typical, that is, if their previous season's outings were a measure of their winning methodology.
"We lost the doubles point, we hadn't had this happen all season," Dowd said. "We only lost the doubles point once in the last two years in Ivy League play. That put us in a unique situation we had not been in."
Despite the Quakers' doubles struggles, the fairly new combination of senior Ptak and junior Ciochina looked fairly comfortable with each other, smacking Columbia's team of Eunice Chao and Kendall Murphy, 8-1.
Columbia (8-4, 0-1) narrowly claimed the other two doubles matches, both by a score of 8-6. Nevertheless, the overall play of the Quakers was not undermined by the doubles section.
Ptak opened up with a commanding victory over Columbia's Dasha Leonyuk, 6-3, 6-1.
The Red and Blue would drop the No. 2 singles match, but end up rolling through the next four singles matches with four victories, all in straight sets.
Dowd admitted that this was not the closest match.
However, he conceded that Columbia is a tough opponent.
"I think this is the best Columbia team that we've played in recent years," Dowd said. "We played one of the better Ivy League teams, we get the next three on road, so the next stretch will be very important."
The Quakers will hit the road again to take on Ivy rival Princeton this Saturday at Noon.
PENN 5, Columbia 2 Doubles
1 -- Leonyuk/Kachar (C) def. S.
Chao/Shweky (P), 8-6
2 -- Ciochina/Ptak (P) def. E.
Chao/Murphy (C), 8-1
3 -- Rahali/Kim (C) def.
Williams/Stanislawski (P), 8-6
Singles
1 -- Ptak (P) def. Leonyuk (C), 6-3, 6-1
2 -- Kachar (C) def. Stanislawski (P), 6-0, 6-4
3 -- Chao (P) def. Nguyen (C), 6-2, 6-4
4 -- Shweky (P) def. Rahali (C), 7-5, 6-2
5 -- Ciochina (P) def. Condit (C), 6-0, 7-6 (7)
6 -- Schiffman (P) def. Kim (C), 6-0, 7-5
