What a long, strange trip it has been.
After Alice Pirsu's upset stunner over UCLA's Sara Walker in the first round of the Omni Hotels National Indoor Tennis Championships, the Quakers star fell to Northwestern's Marine Piriou in the second round of the tournament, 6-2, 4-6, 6-3.
"I had a good first match and I was very happy with my play," Pirsu said. "The second day just went the other way. It was just a couple of points that decided [the outcome]."
Piriou was the ITA midwest regional champion, and has made a reputation of upsetting players over the past month.
After beating her higher ranked teammate, Lia Jackson, in the midwest regional final, Piriou not only definitively made a statement about her place on the Wildcat depth chart, but her status nationally, too.
Piriou followed her win over Pirsu by defeating USC's Jewel Peterson in the quarterfinals. She lost to Lauren Kalvaria of Stanford in a three-set match during the semifinals.
Despite Pirsu's absence from competition last year, the Penn sophomore emerged on the tennis scene from the outset of the season. The Romanian-born star quickly asserted her status as Penn's greatest player ever.
"Overall, she's a very tough player," Penn sophomore captain Sanela Kunovac said. "You can see that she has a lot of experience. She knows her stuff."
While the highlight of Pirsu's sophomore season included qualifying for the tournament and winning the first round match, the Red and Blue felt Pirsu's contributions throughout the season.
At the ECAC championships in October, Pirsu carried the team on her back en-route to a finals matchup with Harvard, as Kunovac was forced to sit out of her singles matches in the tournament due to an injury.
After a successful fall season for the entire team, the Quakers look to follow up on the fall success in their spring campaign.
"We are ready to defend the Ivy League title," Pirsu said. "The team is very solid and we are working hard to get better."
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