W. Tennis' Pirsu makes nationals

Alice Pirsu stood confidently on the baseline with a blazing racket entrenched in her palms, realizing that her goal of qualifying for the indoor national championships was just one set victory away.

Issuing her typical Monica Seles-like grunts with every swing of the racket in yesterday's semifinal match of the Omni Hotels Eastern Regional Indoor Championship, Pirsu quickly burst to a 6-1 first-set victory over Princeton's Kavitha Krishnamurthy.

Penn's No. 1 singles player showed an uncanny ability to place forehand winners in both corners of the court and also added a bevy of dropshots to confuse her opponent.

The rest of the match wouldn't be the same type of cakewalk, though.

Pirsu had gone through peaks and valleys in the previous matches of the tournament. Against Harvard's Alexis Martire during Monday's Sweet Sixteen match, the Crimson freshman came back from 5-2 deficits to win the first set and force a tiebreak in the second before Pirsu took victory in the third.

Things would be the same in the last sets of Pirsu's match against Krishnamurthy.

Krishnamurthy chased Pirsu all over the court in the second set, hitting the decisive winners that Pirsu had previously claimed in the first set to grab a 6-1 victory.

Yet Pirsu regained her form in the third set by attacking the net and combining her powerful backhand ground strokes with the finely tuned finesse of her drop-shot. Krishnamurthy nearly answered the call again in the third, but Pirsu would not budge.

"She's tough as nails," Penn coach Mike Dowd said. "She works hard and it pays off."

Pirsu ended up winning the match, 6-1, 1-6, 6-4, thus accomplishing her goal of qualifying for the Indoor Tennis Championships to be held at Southern Methodist University from Nov. 8-11.

"It's certainly rewarding to be able to fulfill the goals that I set for myself," Pirsu said. "I did my best, and the national indoors is the final goal that I have to look forward to."

But Pirsu's job for the weekend wasn't done yet.

In the finals, she faced a familiar opponent in Harvard's freshman sensation, Courtney Bergman. Bergman recently beat Pirsu in a third-set tiebreak at the ECAC championships, and early in the match it looked as if Pirsu would be able to wreak her revenge.

The powerful Romanian leapt to a 4-0 lead in the first set but subsequently steamrolled into a string of psychological blunders.

Combining Pirsu's mental mistakes with her own potent arsenal of talent, Bergman came back to win the first set. She then romped through the second set to claim the championship, 7-5, 6-1.

"I got down early, picked it up and stayed in it," Bergman said. "I played solid today."

Bergman will join Pirsu as the representatives from the Eastern regional to attend the National Indoor Championships.

Old Dominion's Nataly Cahana and Anna Radeljevic captured the doubles championship of the weekend over Temple's Croatian duo of Darina Penic and Lara Ercegovic. Both finalist participants will also travel to Texas next week.

"Our goal is to win nationals," Radeljevic said.

"We can do it for sure," Cahana added.

The Monarch duo had also captured the Cissie Leary doubles title at Penn in September.

This weekend's Regional featured 59 schools and 126 women competing during the course of the five-day tournament.

"The level of tennis is rising every year," Radeljevic said. "It's definitely higher than last year, and this is higher than most of the other regionals."

Pirsu's emergence on the college tennis scene may be one of several reasons for the rise in tennis over the past years. At a minimum, the sophomore has definitively put her mark on the Penn tennis community.

"She is the best women's tennis player to ever come through Penn," Penn assistant coach Bob Levy said.

Levy has officially coached the team since 1985, but he has been affiliated with Penn since his playing days in 1949-1953.

"She's a world class player and can compete with anybody," Dowd said.

Pirsu will get that chance to back up Dowd's words in the national championships.

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