The Penn women's tennis team may have found a new out-of-conference rival.
Four Penn players and five from William and Mary, a top-15 team last year, reached the round of sixteen at the ITA East Regional. Three of the Tribe eliminated Penn players in the singles bracket.
The tournament, hosted by Old Dominion, was the last tennis event of the fall season.
Although none of Penn's players reached the semifinal round in singles, all four who qualified, sophomore Ekaterina Kosminskaya and seniors Julia Koulbitskaya, Yulia Rivelis and Charlotte Tansill, won their first two matches to reach the round of 16.
"Our team is very deep," Koulbitskaya said. "We were Ivy League champions last year, but we only lost one player, so our lineup is pretty much the same."
Kosminskaya, the sixth-seeded singles player entering the tournament, reached the quarterfinals before finally bowing out to Megan Moulton-Levy of William and Mary, the overall number one seed.
In the round of 16, Rivelis and Koulbitskaya, seeded 14th and 15th respectively, matched up against two other William and Mary players, but neither senior could advance.
"[William and Mary] is always a really strong team," Koulbitskaya said. "It was really impressive that they had five people in the round of sixteen and we had four, so compared to other schools I think that's a good showing."
Kosminskaya and Koulbitskaya teamed up as the second-seeded doubles pair. The duo had won two tournaments entering the ITA regional, but they lost to third-seeded Marshall in the semifinals.
"It's a great start," coach Michael Dowd said. "We have to keep our condition up over break and work hard in the offseason. and we are going to be contenders."
On the men's side, only two players, junior Justin Fox and sophomore Adam Schwartz, competed in the ITA Northeast Regional event held at Princeton. Both were eliminated in the second round.
Fox and Schwartz also played together in doubles, but after upsetting ninth-seeded Binghamton in the second round, they fell to Penn State's team in the round of sixteen.
"The doubles results were solid for us," men's coach Nik DeVore said in a release. "Justin and Adam had not played together yet this fall, so this was a bit of an experiment. Winning two matches against some of the top teams in the East, especially Binghamton, is a good result."
