By the time the Quakers had a chance to lose, all the bounce had gone out of the ball.
There was no dramatic finish, no anxious huddle around center court. Even though Kristen Lange, Sydney Scott and Paula Pearson - the top three squash players for Penn - lost their matches, the rest of the lineup was strong enough.
Lucky for them that the outcome of Sunday's match was already known - Penn was up 6-1 before Lange and Scott took the court. The Quakers eventually swatted the Bantams 6-3.
For No. 1 Penn (6-0, 3-0 Ivy), this provided their first real test since gaining the top spot in the country on Jan. 4.
Trinity (9-1) was ranked No. 3 going into the match and was coming off a key win over No. 2 Yale, a team that the Quakers had bested earlier in the year.
Although it was not the Red and Blue's most dominant win this year, coach Jack Wyant had nothing but praise for his team.
"I'm really proud of them," he said. "Even the matches we lost were very competitive. Our goal going in was to play to the best of our ability."
"We're really happy," senior and captain Radhika Ahluwalia said. "We knew it would be close, but everyone on the team was on their 'A' game."
The showdown of the afternoon was undoubtedly the No. 3 match between senior captain Pearson, and Trinity's Ashley Clackson. Pearson lost 3-2 in a matchup where all of the flights were decided by fewer than three points.
While not a rivalry, Pearson and Clackson have a long history of friendly competition.
"We've been going back and forth since we were 10 years old playing in Canada," Pearson said.
Wyant feels that Pearson's match was representative of the meeting as a whole.
"Even Paula's match, which was a heartbreaker, set the tone for the whole match," he said. "It demonstrated that even if they're better than us or going to beat us, it's going to be extremely tough."
A lot of that toughness came courtesy of junior Lauralynn Drury, playing out of the number eight spot, who went down a match ball in her fourth game only to come back and win 3-2.
The Quakers were not disappointed by their struggles in the top positions, even though it was the Bantams' middle players who looked strong against Yale.
"I'm not surprised they lost, because their top three are really good too," Wyant said. "But I think the middle of our lineup played as well as I've ever seen."
There may be some concern for national championship hopes since the Quakers' No. 1 and No. 2 players are just freshmen, but Wyant said that the juniors and seniors in the rest of the lineup have demonstrated the leadership that he expects from them.
He emphasized that the team is taking things one match at a time, even though wins over Princeton and Harvard would almost guarantee the Quakers their first Ivy title in seven years.
However, his players are more exuberant about their shot at a title. Pearson tried to fight back a smile talking about it.
"Our chances keep getting better every day," she said.
