With a whimper, the Penn men's tennis season was brought to a close as the Quakers dropped their final two matches this past weekend.
The Quakers were upset by Cornell 4-3 in Ithaca, N.Y., on Friday and came home to Levy Tennis Pavilion only to be felled again by Columbia 5-2 yesterday.
Against the Big Red (7-11, 2-4 Ivy), Penn got the start it wanted as it claimed the doubles point with a pair of 8-5 victories despite missing starters Jonathan Boym and Justin Fox.
However, momentum rapidly shifted back to Cornell as senior Quakers Joseph Lok and Brandon O'Gara lost two quick singles matches.
The Cornell crowd then became more boisterous and propelled its team back into it.
When the dust had cleared, only senior ace Jason Pinsky and fellow senior Eric Riley were able to steal wins as the Big Red singles had their way with the Quakers (12-11, 3-4).
Worse still, the Red and Blue knew that they should've left New York with a win rather than the loss.
"It was very disappointing," coach Nik DeVore said. "We really were expecting to go there and beat Cornell."
Yesterday, against the more dangerous Lions (11-7, 5-2), the Quakers were further shorthanded as Lok was benched due in part to am ankle injury. Lok's absence caused multiple mismatches in favor of the Lions.
Beginning in doubles, Columbia capitalized quickly as it claimed the point without a single Quakers win.
The Levy home crowd was slow to mobilize in support of Penn, but as Pinsky and Riley claimed singles wins, energy ignited and spread to the players.
Pinsky's opponent, Jon Wong, caused particular problems for him with strong, precise hits. Pinsky was flustered in the first frame, losing 2-6, but became stronger as the match progressed. Wong began to wither, and Pinsky took the next two sets 6-2, 6-3 to claim the point.
Pinsky was pleased with his final Ivy match.
"I beat him pretty easily before," the captain said. "He came out firing in the first set and I wasn't doing that well, but I've been doing this for three years. You just have to stay solid - it was a good way to go out."
Following the wins, Penn's Adam Schwartz lost to a sneering Bogdan Borta, and any semblance of momentum for Penn was lost. From there, the Quakers dropped the rest of the singles matches to lose 5-2, a fitting end to an up-and-down year.
"On paper, with the lineup we had out there, and with some inexperienced guys out there, we had no business even being in that match," DeVore said. "Really, we were points away from winning it."
But at the end of the day, the Quakers are without the Ivy championship - and being points away is small consolation.
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