Alice Pirsu played in NCAA W. Tennis Singles

Although the Penn women's tennis team's season ended in the second round of the NCAA Tournament with a 4-0 loss to Duke, one Penn player's season was far from over on May 11.

Ranked No. 24 in the nation, Penn's No. 1 singles player Alice Pirsu not only entered the NCAA Women's Tennis Singles Championships in Palo Alto, Calif., as a 9/16 seeded player -- the tournament seeds the first eight players, No. 1- 8, and then seeds the next eight as an entire group. All players in the latter group are seeded as 9/16.

Pirsu was also marked as a pre-tourney "Player to Watch" in the East Region. And in addition to the pre-tourney accolades -- by virtue of her seeding in the top-16 -- Pirsu earned a spot as a singles' All-American.

"One of the goals I set out this year was to be All-American," Pirsu said. "It's quite an achievement and a great feeling to have done it."

But Pirsu's achievements didn't end with the pre-tourney buildup.

One of three Ivy players in the East region -- along with unseeded Courtney Bergman (Harvard) and Kavitha Krishnamurthy (Princeton) -- Pirsu more than justified her accolades, becoming the first-ever Quakers singles player to advance past the first round of the Singles Championships with a 6-3, 6-2 win over UNC's Marlene Mejia (15-11).

Although Bergman and Krishnamurthy both lost in the first round, Pirsu kept right on rolling, reaching the Sweet 16 with an identical 6-3, 6-2 win over Alena Jecminkova (18-14) of Kansas State in her next match.

"I was just taking it one match at a time," Pirsu said. "It was great to make [the Sweet 16], but I wasn't thinking of winning one or two or whatever number of rounds."

The Sweet 16 would be the farthest round to which the pragmatic Pirsu (32-11) would advance. She was eliminated from the tournament following a 6-1, 6-2 loss to the nation's top-ranked player, Jessica Lehnhoff of the University of Florida.

After dropping the first set to Lehnhoff (36-3) -- a member of the 2001 USA Tennis Collegiate team and a defending NCAA Doubles' champion -- Pirsu jumped out to a fast start and grabbed the first game of the second set.

"I tried to fight back, because even though I was down, I know the match is not decided after the first set," Pirsu said.

But Lehnhoff -- who teamed with Florida teammate Whitney Laiho last to become the first collegians to reach the third round in doubles at the U.S. Open since Louise Allen and Gretchen Rush of Trinity University in 1983 -- would not allow Pirsu to fight back.

After dropping the first game, the Florida senior captured six of the next seven games to close out Pirsu.

"It was just a day when she was better than I was," Pirsu said after the loss. "She was very consistent and she played well.

"Today was just her day."

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