Penn's best doubles team scores upset
The singles bracket of the Cissie Leary Invitational may have been a dud. But as far as Penn was concerned, the doubles competition couldn't have gone any better.
Fresh off of taking the William and Mary Invitational, Ekaterina Kosminskaya and Julia Koulbitskaya gave Penn its first ever doubles win at the Leary Invitational.
The duo, ranked 53, beat Kansas' No. 36 tandem of Avdeeva and Horvath, 8-6, in the final after breezing through the opening stages.
The Moscow-born pair had to come back from a 6-5 deficit to beat the Kansas team, which saw a similarly easy path to the final game.
It marked the second consecutive upset of a top-40 team for the pair, who beat No. 25 Airapetian/Franco last weekend at William and Mary.
- Sebastien Angel
Top seeds drop out, give Yale's Kim a gift
The singles bracket at the Cissie Leary Invitational was set up to be a doozy.
Penn's No. 1 overall seed Ekaterina Kosminskaya (ranked 95) was primed for a matchup with No. 2 seed Melissa Saiontz of Princeton (ranked 98) in the final.
It was Penn-Princeton. It was the Ivy League Player of the Year against one of her only real conference rivals.
But neither showed up, and Yale's Janet Kim won instead.
Melissa Saiontz, listed in the tournament program, did not play at all in the Invitational.
Ekaterina Kosminskaya was listed in the tournament's opening bracket but ended up a last-minute scratch. Kosminskaya, who wasn't feeling well, decided to concentrate on playing doubles with Julia Koulbitskaya.
It worked well for Kosminskaya, who scored an upset tournament title with her teammate in doubles. But it left the singles bracket in a shambles.
Kim, the four-seed, had a fairly smooth road to the title. In the semifinals, when she would have faced Kosminskaya, she instead beat Charlotte Tansill, the Penn player who wasn't even ranked among the top 16 seeds.
In the final, she knocked off three-seed Inga Beerman of Virginia Tech, 7-5, 6-0.
Penn's Yulia Rivelis also made the semifinals. But she lost her potential finals berth in a loss to Beerman, 7-6 (8), 6-3. -S.A.
