On Friday, the women's tennis team returned to the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) New England Championships for the first time since its stellar showing at the event last season, which included a singles championship for then-sophomore Julia Browne and a runner-up finish in doubles. The Jumbos wrote a slightly different ending this time around, but they proved once again that few in the region can compete with the top of their lineup.
The No. 1-seeded doubles tandem of Browne and fellow tri-captain Meghan McCooey, a senior, won the tournament's doubles championship on Sunday, rallying to defeat the third-seeded Williams duo of senior Grace Baljon and sophomore Taylor French 9-8 (0) in a tiebreaker in the finals. The victory came hours after Browne completed another deep run in the singles draw, reaching the title match before bowing out to Williams sophomore Kristin Alotta 6-1, 6-1.
The performances by Browne and McCooey were the highlights of an eventful weekend for the Jumbos, who saw all five of their tournament entrants win at least one match over the course of the three-day event, held in Cambridge, Mass.
"I couldn't be happier with how the five that were here participated and competed," coach Kate Bayard said. "I'm really excited with how everyone on the team has worked this first week and a half. I think if we keep up that level of intensity and that hard work, this year's just going to keep getting better."
After Baljon and French used an early break to build a seemingly comfortable 6-3 edge in Sunday's doubles championship, Browne and McCooey stormed back to win the next three games and knot the score at six. The Tufts duo then had an opportunity to serve for the championship, leading 8-7, but Williams broke McCooey's serve and sent the match to a decisive tiebreak.
From there, however, the Jumbos dominated. Thanks in part to some strong net play by McCooey, Tufts rolled to a 7-0 shutout in the tiebreak, giving the team's first doubles pair a regional crown to go along with the national title it captured last season.
"We weren't playing our best tennis, but we didn't want to lose feeling like we gave it to them and that we didn't really give it our best shot," McCooey said. "We got off to a slow start, but somehow we were able to put together a few points here and there to stay in it, and we got our confidence back. Once we had our confidence, we just started playing the doubles that we know how to play."
"It felt really good to win the doubles," Browne added. "They were serving really well, but we were only down one break, and we just needed to get into that one extra gear. Once we broke them, we knew we were going to be able to do it. We just tried to stay positive and didn't give up."
On the singles side, Browne didn't encounter a hint of trouble until Saturday's quarterfinals, when she needed three sets to eliminate the tournament's seventh seed, Middlebury sophomore Tori Aiello. In semifinal action on Sunday, Browne overcame a 5-4 first-set deficit against third-seeded Nicole Pontee of Vassar and pulled out a 7-6 (5), 6-2 win to set up a title match showdown with Alotta, the Jumbo junior tri-captain's playing partner for much of the summer.
But much as Browne burst onto the scene with her victory at ITAs in 2008, this year's singles championship turned into a coming-out party for Alotta, who as a freshman last season played primarily out of the fourth singles spot for the national champion Ephs. Perhaps as surprising as the end result was Alotta's margin of victory. Sunday marked only the second occasion in the two-time All-American Browne's career in which she had won as few as two games in a match.
"It hasn't really happened to me in a while where I felt like there wasn't much I could do out there," Browne said. "I tried a bunch of things, but I really didn't get into a rhythm. I tried to fight for each point, but there wasn't much I could do. She wasn't really giving me anything."
"Julia wasn't used to being down in this tournament," Bayard added. "Throughout the way, she was in charge, so I think it threw her a little bit when Kristin came out strong and all of a sudden she was down 4-1. She never really settled in, I guess."
The Jumbos put together a representative performance across the board in the singles draw, advancing five players, including freshmen Janice Lam and Lindsay Katz, to the final 32. McCooey, the tournament's No. 6 seed, matched her career best by reaching the quarterfinals. In doubles, meanwhile, the first-time pairing of Katz and junior Edwina Stewart mounted a serious second-round challenge against the tournament's No. 2 seed, Mohona Siddique and Jacqueline Shen of Wellesley, before falling in a tight 9-7 setback.
"They're a team that we threw together this week, but they looked like they had been playing together for a long time with how well they communicated," Bayard said. "I was very impressed with their doubles."
With the marquee event of their abbreviated fall season now behind them, the Jumbos are off until Oct. 2, when they will return to Cambridge for a dual match against MIT.
