W. Tennis kills two birds, but not Tigers

Lauren Sadaka understands that for the youngsters on the women's tennis team, it's all about confidence and experience.

From these points of view, the Quakers were able to kill two birds with one stone this weekend.

But they also showed that they are too green to seriously contend with the big boys of the Ivy League. Coming off what coach Mike Dowd called a successful preseason practice, the Quakers steamrolled Buffalo to open up their fall season, but were smashed by the host Tigers to finish up the tournament.

"Playing Buffalo was a good warm-up for us," Sadaka, Penn's captain and lone senior, said.

Penn went 6-1 in singles and completed a 3-0 sweep in doubles against the Bulls. The only singles loss came from junior Maria Anisimova, who lost in a tie-break after splitting the first two sets. Perhaps most impressive for Penn was freshman Emily Wolf, who defeated her Buffalo counterpart, 6-2, 6-0.

But playing the Tigers was a completely different story. The Quakers struggled mightily in doubles, losing all three matches, while going 3-5 in singles. Junior phenom Ekaterina Kosminskaya, ranked No. 99 in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association's preseason poll, put in one of the few bright spots for Penn, winning at the No. 1 spot.

She was unavailable for comment, and Dowd did not return repeated requests for comment.

"There's definitely a lot more work needed to beat a team like Princeton," Sadaka said. "They're probably one of the top Ivy League teams this year."

She noted that playing a quality team like Princeton was a good eye-opener for some of the freshmen on the team. They quickly found out what was needed to compete for an Ivy League title.

Most striking this weekend was the vast differential in the quality of Penn's singles and doubles play.

Overall, the Quakers went 9-6 in their singles contests - winning eight in straight sets - while struggling to a 3-3 doubles mark. Those two-player affairs were drawn out, sometimes going into extra games.

Sadaka attributed this discrepancy to a lack of playing time together.

"In the fall season, we're just trying different teams to see what works best," Sadaka said. "It takes us a couple tournaments to see who plays better with who. We should have strong doubles teams by the spring."

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