The Columbia men’s and women’s tennis teams will hit the road again this weekend in an effort to fine-tune their games for Ivy League play, which begins in the spring. The men will travel to archrival Princeton to compete in the Princeton Invitational, while the women will travel to both Philadelphia and West Point by splitting up the team. The female Lions will travel to Philadelphia in order to compete in the Cissie Leary Invitational, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, and to West Point, where they will participate in the Eastern Championships.

The men have developed an attitude of guarded optimism after competing in two tournaments before this weekend, the Virginia Invitational and the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center College Invitational.

“We played in the Princeton Invitational last year, and this is another chance for us to get in a lot of tennis,” head coach Bid Goswami said.

“The tournament features two flights, an A and a B flight, each with 32 players, so our guys should get in a lot of matches,” Goswami continued.

Columbia has received standout performances from junior Jon Wong, senior Bogdan Borta, and transfer standout Mihai Nichifor. Nichifor achieved his first tournament victory as a Lion, when he won the consolation tournament in the Virginia Invitational A flight.

“This is the third week of play for a few of us, and we are getting better each time,” Goswami said. “We should have 10 guys playing this weekend, and last week we didn’t play that well in doubles, so hopefully we will do better this week. Some guys did well in individual events, so hopefully I will see some improvement.”

The women will head to Philadelphia and West Point coming off a strong showing at the Columbia Classic, held at the Dick Savitt Tennis Center this past weekend. Senior Marlena Hall won the B singles draw in a performance which illustrates that she’ll contribute to the team’s depth going forward into the spring. Sophomore Stephanie Zilberman continued her strong play, reaching the finals of the A draw before losing to Camille Jania of Harvard in straight sets.

At the Cissie Leary Invitational, the Lions will face some of the strongest teams in the northeast. Penn, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Princeton and Temple will all be sending representatives to this tournament. In addition, the competition will feature Ekaterina Kosminskaya a Penn junior, who comes into the tournament ranked 99th in the country. The Lions have seen Kosminskaya before, as she was first team all-Ivy in singles and second team all-Ivy in doubles. For Columbia, Stephanie Zilberman and Sydney Murray will lead the Lions and compete in the top flight of the singles draw.
The Light Blue athletes not competing in Philadelphia will trek out to West Point, N.Y., in order to play in the Eastern Championships. The forecast calls for rain throughout the weekend, which could move play indoors to Army’s seven brand-new courts. With 18 teams confirmed to show up, the weather could create an interesting scheduling situation with the various draws as well as back draws. Although it is the only Ivy League team competing, Columbia has played several of the other teams in past seasons, so they should provide a good barometer for this Lions team going forward.

The Cissie Leary Invitational is scheduled to kick off at on 8 a.m. Friday and the Eastern Championships are set to start at 9 a.m. on Friday as well. The Princeton Invitational will begin at 8 a.m on Friday and last the whole weekend.