Former Penn tennis star Joe Mirabile will get a chance to revisit his old stomping grounds at Levy Pavillion this Sunday. This time, however, Mirabile will not be rooting for the home team.
Mirabile is the assistant coach at Temple. Penn will take on the Owls (2-4) in the first game of its doubleheader, and will then face Bucknell (0-1) in the afternoon.
As a senior in the 2005-06 season, Mirabile led Penn to its first Ivy League championship in 50 years. The victory is still fresh in the minds of some of the older players, and they are looking forward to seeing their former captain.
"There really is no conflict," junior Jonathan Boym said. "When I think of Joe Mirabile, I think of Penn tennis. It doesn't matter if he is the assistant coach of some other school, I'll always think of our championship team when I was a freshman."
The doubleheader comes on the heels of a narrow defeat against No. 45 Old Dominion. Penn lost 4-3 in a contest with several match-point opportunities for both sides.
The Quakers were forced to play without two of their top players: No. 2-seeded Boym, who said he could not attend "because of a personal matter," and No. 3 senior Justin Fox, who was out with a sprained ankle.
Given the absence of two key players, and the strength of the opposition, Penn was satisfied with the result.
"In the end, we were really close to knocking off a top-50 program," senior Eric Riley said. "I think more than anything the feeling coming off that match was positive. We lost really tight and we had match points, but overall we were happy with our performance. So hopefully we can just keep that going this coming Sunday."
The absences also allowed Penn to experiment with different lineups and to give younger players match experience.
In particular, freshman Dmitry Bury proved himself in the sixth singles spot. He overcame a narrow loss in the first set to win 5-7, 7-5, 6-4.
The depth of the roster will be useful when playing two matches only hours apart.
"Boym will be back for this weekend, so that gives us a tougher lineup and that changes the doubles team around, so we obviously will be much stronger," assistant coach Josh Cohen said. "We do have enough people to switch the lineup around if [any player] does have a long match in the first."
Rotating the doubles partners will not just help the Quakers stave off fatigue. It will also allow them to find which players work best together and to start to solidify partnerships.
"We have been switching up our doubles teams a lot," Riley said. "So we have been working on finding a good combination that will work for the rest of the season. And this is really the time to do it, the beginning of the season.
"You don't want to be stuck moving people around when the Ivy season comes."
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