The Penn State women's tennis team hopes to divide and conquer this weekend. That is, to divide itself and conquer the competition at two different tournaments.

While four members of the team traveled to Philadelphia for today's start of the Cissy Leary Invitational at the University of Pennsylvania, four other members have traveled to College Park, Md. for the Maryland Invitational. By playing two separate tournaments on one weekend, the team can send more players to competition than if it had focused all of its attention on one tournament.

Because of the larger number of players at the Cissy Leary Invitational, players will compete in up to four matches a day for the three-day tournament. Penn State women's tennis coach Buffy Baker decided to send her most conditioned players there because of the grueling schedule.

"I had initially told the team that whoever came back in the best physical shape, the ones that were match-ready would play," Baker said. "If you're not ready, you're going to get injured. If you came back ready to go, you were probably going to get the nod to go."

This standard of fitness allowed Baker to choose seniors Sasha Abraham and Katelyn BeVard to travel with junior Jenny Shular and sophomore Lauren Holzberg to Philadelphia. As some of the most successful returning players from last year, they will be looked to lead the team both on and off the court during the upcoming season.

Penn State will stick with tried-and-true doubles teams in Philadelphia this weekend when Abraham and Holzberg will team up, with BeVard and Shular forming the other team.

"Abraham and Holzberg played together last year. Shular and BeVard are no strangers together either," Baker said. "Those teams are not new at all. We're just continuing to see if those are teams that we want to continue to work with this year."

The Maryland Invitational, also starting today, will be an opportunity for the team to test the newest members. Freshmen Sarah Lotto and Lauren McCarthy will compete with senior Andreea Niculescu and sophomore Dorthy Dohanics. This will be the first collegiate competition for Lotto and McCarthy, who Baker believes can be immediate impact players.

"We've got so many more options this year with our new additions, which is exciting," Baker said. "Both are going to be good doubles players. Lotto's got a good serve. She's got great hands at the net. At Maryland we're going to be able to see them a little bit more."

The start of the fall season is a time for the team to compete in a large number of matches and improve technically before the spring season and the start of Big Ten play. That will be the goal this weekend at both the Cissy Leary Invitational and the Maryland Invitational.

"It's a time we make some technical corrections in their games," Baker said. "It's a tough time because we're trying to tweak their strokes to make them better in the long run. It's a developmental time. It's a heavy physical and technical time for us."