When Penn State women's tennis coach Buffy Baker woke up this past Sunday morning, the final day of the Penn State Invitational, it must have been with a smile.
Her team had rebounded from an opening weekend of action that was disappointing to say the least, to dominate their own invitational this weekend, representing nearly half of all championship match participants, for all flights, singles and doubles.
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"When you get down you remember you can always come back. When I lose a set, I try not to think about it. I just play every point the same. A lot of matches go three sets, so I don't let it bother me."
— Rebecca Ho
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Sophomore Kristen Nowicki lost her first set of the entire tournament 1-6, but battled back to sweep six straight sets over three matches to also reach the finals of Flight B. In the semi-final round Nowicki was forced to defeat her teammate, freshman Megan Marton.
Junior April Uy crushed the opposition, not dropping one set on her way to a championship in Flight C.
And the doubles tandem of Nowicki and junior Judy Wang tore through the top half of the Flight A bracket to also reach the finals.
The only competition where no Nittany Lions reached the final was in Flight B doubles. That's five flights, 10 spots in the finals, four of which went to Penn State players.
"It was definitely great to have that representation up and down the tournament. It definitely shows balance and depth," Baker said. "Kristen and Judy played very well together in Flight A doubles. It was also good to see Rebecca Ho play well. She was tired but still fought through an ankle injury."
The Lions went only 1-3 in the finals, but that would not dampen a terrific overall weekend. The fall semester in collegiate women's tennis is used for improvement and learning to play in tough situations. This past weekend provided ample opportunity for both.
It was early Friday afternoon and Ho was in trouble. She had lost the first set of her quarterfinal match with Keri Olsen of William and Mary and she was trailing in the second. She was coming off an 0-2 performance at the ITA All-American tournament in California, and was nursing an ankle injury that had bothered her for weeks. She had every excuse to give in and lose her third match in her last four, but she did not.
Penn State's No. 1 singles player dug deep and rallied to win the match and eventually advance to the finals.
"I kind of wasn't playing well. But I worked through it and came back. When you get down you remember you can always come back," Ho said. "When I lose a set, I try not to think about it. I just play every point the same. A lot of matches go three sets, so I don't let it bother me."
Earlier that morning, Nowicki faced a similar challenge. She had been overwhelmed in the first set of her first round match, and was staring an early exit in the face. She too battled back to reach the finals.
"I started off making a lot of mistakes, but then I started to make more shots that helped me come back," Nowicki said.
Those were not the only displays of gritty tennis from the tournament. Sophomore Leigh Ann Merryman lost her first match, but came back to win four straight and finish third in Flight B. And Marton posted a 6-0, 6-2 win over Lourdes Riusech of American University in the quarterfinals, to avenge an earlier loss at the Maryland Invitational in September.
These examples symbolize, coupled with Uy's confident and thorough domination of Flight C, what Baker and Penn State want from the fall semester. Learning how to compete.
"We competed much better than we did in our first week," Baker said. "We played much better and showed progress, that's what we're looking for."
"I definitely think after the first week we have gotten better. This weekend we were so much more intense than in the past," Uy said.
During this portion of the season, where no team scores are kept and individual performances are all that matter, tournaments can be hard to judge. Any way you slice it though, this past weekend has to be considered a success for Penn State.
