Penn women’s tennis continued its strong start to the season, hosting the Cissie Leary Invitational this past weekend, where it played against Princeton, Saint Joseph’s, Temple, Drexel, and Lafayette.
On the first day of the invitational, the Red and Blue started off strong.
Penn swept 10 singles and all five doubles matches against St. Joe’s and Lafayette. In fact, four of the Quakers’ doubles pairs — composed of senior Esha Velaga and freshman Athina Schlepphorst, junior Lara Stojanovski and sophomore Joleen Saw, senior Liza Tkachenko and sophomore Varsha Vedula, and senior Sasha Motlagh and freshman Cookie Jarvis-Tredgett, respectively, all defeated their opponents with a score of 6-1. Quaker freshman pair Peien Deng and Emma Tomova also defeated Lafayette’s Hanna Ganchi and Marie Sofia Romaniello, 6-2. Penn’s sweep on day one also included three double bagels by Tkachenko, Tomova, and Vedula in their singles matches, further exemplifying the team’s dominance.
Day two saw Penn playing Princeton as well as the three other teams, marking Penn’s first matchup against an Ivy League opponent this season. Velaga and Schlepphorst continued to demonstrate their strength as a doubles pair, defeating the Tigers’ Alice Ferlito and Madeleine Jessup, 7-5, in a hard-fought match. The team won two more doubles matches against Temple as Saw and Stojanovski cruised to a 6-1 win against Marianthi Christoforidou and Nina Andreoni, and Tkachenko and Vedula defeated Martyna Mackiewicz and Tesse Antonis. Deng and Tomova fell 6-0 to Princeton’s Tsehay Driscoll and Maren Urata, while Motlagh and Jarvis-Tredgett fell to Temple’s Yasmin Costa and Tianni Zhou. The singles matches of the day had more mixed results, with five wins and four losses.
Penn wrapped up the final day of the tournament fighting hard, with three singles wins and four losses, one of which was Tkachenko’s heartbreakingly close loss to Princeton’s Lilian Liu 6-3, 5-7, 1-0 (12). The doubles matches of the day proved to be tough, with three losses and only Deng and Tomova’s 6-3 win against Princeton’s Ferlito and Jessup.
The Quakers ultimately had a successful tournament on home court, with certain losses but, more importantly, many great wins. The Red and Blue will return to competition for the ITA Northeast Regionals in Princeton, N.J., from Oct. 15-20.
