Penn women's tennis drops two close Ivy contests to Bears and Bulldogs

The Ivy League has not been friendly to Penn women’s tennis this year.

After dropping a match to Princeton in its conference opener last week, the Quakers hit the road to face Brown and defending champ Yale this weekend, hungry to return to its winning ways.

But the Red and Blue failed to register a win, ultimately falling to the Bears, 5-2, on Friday and to the Bulldogs, 4-3, on Saturday.

In its first match against Brown (12-6, 1-1 Ivy), Penn(7-7, 0-3) cruised through doubles play, with the duo of junior Sol Eskenazi and sophomore Sonya Latycheva winning, 8-3, and freshman Kana Daniel and senior Jaime Yapp-Shing taking the No. 2 spot, 8-5.

But the Red and Blue could not keep up the momentum.

Leaving everything on the court, three Penn players forced their singles matches to three sets, with Eskenazi, Latycheva and senior Stephanie Do all coming up short.

Only freshman Luba Vazhenina pulled away with a singles point, winning her match in two sets.

In the Saturday afternoon match in New Haven, Conn., the No. 52 Elis (9-8, 1-1) edged Penn in a close matchup.

For the second year in a row, the Red and Blue dropped the doubles point to Yale.

In a shake-up of the doubles pairings, Eskenazi and Daniel defeated Yale’s star sophomore Madeleine Hamilton and freshman Sherry Li at the top spot, 8-4. But at No. 2 and No. 3, Latycheva and Yapp-Shing as well as Vazhenina and Do fell flat, losing 8-5 and 8-2, respectively, to give the Bulldogs the early advantage in the match.

“With Yale, we lost the doubles point, and that ended up being the deciding factor for us,” coach Sanela Kunovac said. “We can’t afford to take our eye off the ball and not start strong with doubles.

“[But we also] have to have faith in our singles players that they’ll go in there and make a strong stand as they did against Yale.”

The top-billed match between the Ancient Eight rivals came at the first singles position, where Eskenazi stayed strong and prevailed over Hamilton in a stunning three-set display of endurance, 6-7(5), 6-3, 4-3(5).

Though Vazhenina toppled Li, 6-3, 6-4, at No. 5, and Do defeated Elis junior Amber Li, 7-5, 6-2, at No. 6, Yale had already dealt the devastating blow by winning three straight-set singles points. The Elis had success in the No. 2 though No. 4 positions to hand the Quakers their third Ivy loss.

Despite the loss, the Quakers were able to keep things in perspective.

“Our goal is to take each match in isolation, not to look so much at the final outcome. One match at a time. Whatever goes, goes,” Kunovac said. “In that sense, we still have the same approach. Obviously, we would prefer for our record right now to reflect differently. But we’re still taking it one match at a time.”

Penn will be able to put that approach to the test very quickly, as Harvard and Dartmouth will be paying a visit to the Hamlin Tennis Center next weekend to resume Ivy play.

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