It had been a while.

“We tried doubles combination No. 2000 [against Penn],” joked Fish, who has shuffled his lineups routinely of late. “It seemed to work pretty well. We gave the guys a little fresh look.”

Playing with co-captain Jonathan Chu in the top doubles contest was Jordan Bohnen, a senior who has seen little time in recent months, and mainly towards the bottom of the ladder.

The result? An 8-3 win.

“We practiced really well, we warmed up really well, and we came out firing,” Chu said. “We took it, and we ran with it.”

As did the second and third doubles teams, which won 8-3 and 8-6, respectively.

After last weekend’s Ivy-opening matches saw Harvard win only two of its six doubles contests—both in tiebreaks—this early cushion was more than welcome.

“Everybody’s been through a lot of losing,” Fish admitted. “We jumped out to a good lead, which, as it turned out, we needed.”

The doubles point would indeed prove vital, for Harvard and the Quakers would split the singles competition right down the middle, 3-3.

The Crimson left Penn with a 4-3 win in hand, though not without some good, old-fashioned, drunken Quaker heckling—“it was no-holds-barred,” Fish said, laughing.

When the bus left Penn, though, the players were focused on one thing.

“Once a team gets a little bit of a win, they start to say ‘I’m better than this,’” said Fish, who commended his players for “keeping their heads up.”

“Sometimes, it’s just a spark that ignites it.”

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Seesel can be reached at seesel@fas.harvard.edu.