Penn freshman Pierce Cravens stepped on the court Saturday afternoon prepared to face an opponent unlike any other he encountered this season.
Cravens was competing against a full-grown adult.
The Five Man Team Championship in Hartford, Conn., is unique because it is not exclusively a collegiate event. Although a number of colleges participated in the weekend's competition, the Five Man Team is actually meant to be a club championship. Because of this, it has no implication on the Quakers' team ranking.
For this weekend, the Quakers were divided into two teams of five players: an "A" team and a "B" team. The two squads competed in separate brackets, but the latter was the only one to face a club team made up of non-collegiate players.
While it may appear that club teams consisting of mostly adults have a disadvantage against younger, quicker collegiate squads, the truth is that their presence causes more of a problem for the college player.
"You have to adjust your game and play more consciously against adults," Cravens said. "You have to out-think your opponent as opposed to out-running him."
Cravens made the adjustment with success, chalking up a win in Penn's 3-2 victory over a club team from Albany, N.Y.
On Friday, in the first day of competition, both the A and B teams were victorious, winning against squads from Yale and Hamilton, ranked third and 21st in the country, respectively.
The win against Yale was a particularly sweet one for the Quakers because they lost to the Bulldogs 7-2 earlier in the season.
The A team was not as successful on Saturday, however, as they lost to a five-man team from No. 1 ranked Trinity College.
"This match was a little bit different than the last time we played them," Penn coach Craig Thorpe-Clark said. "It was some type of mixture from their squad and not their top five."
The B team, on the other hand, was able to reach the finals to take on Bates, which is ranked 12th in the country.
While the Bobcats played their best five players in the match, the Quakers' team consisted of players from the lower end of the team's ladder.
Even though the Bobcats swept the match, Thorpe-Clark saw it as "a good opportunity for those guys to play someone that they normally wouldn't in match play."
Although the weekend's competition will have no effect on team rankings, it was an opportunity for the Quakers to loosen up for next weekend's more significant Team Championships in Boston.
