While tri-captains junior Julia Browne and senior Meghan McCooey were off winning their second straight Intercollegiate Tennis Association Small College National Championship in doubles in Mobile, Ala., the rest of the women's tennis team was taking care of business at the New England Women's Intercollegiate Tennis Tournament at Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges.
The Jumbos sent four different pairs to compete in the New England tournament. The format was rather unique: Each team's two players split up to play singles matches against an opposing team's player, followed by one final doubles match, with the best of all three winning. The best finish for Tufts came from senior Erica Miller and first-year Lindsay Katz, who won their first two matches in the top flight Gail Smith Division before being eliminated in round16.
The Miller-Katz duo squashed its first opponents, Amherst seniors Jennifer Ouyang and Anuja Ankola, 3-0 in the opening round, and then went on to beat Trinity's No. 1 doubles pair of first-year Hillary Hoyt and senior Olivia Merns by a tally of 2-1. Miller and Katz ultimately fell 2-1 at the hands of senior Leslie Hansen and sophomore Anastasia Vishnevetsky from MIT, who were the eventual runners-up in the event.
Junior Edwina Stewart and sophomore Jenn LaCara won their first match of the tournament in a 3-0 sweep over Roger Williams sophomore Amanda Wolfe and freshman Tracy Klein, but came up just short in the second round, losing 2-1 to Hannah Hoerner and Emily Lombardi, a pair of sophomores from Bowdoin.
The Tufts duos of first-years Janice Lam and Lauren Hollender as well as senior tri-captain Laura Hoguet and sophomore Natalie Schils both had first-round byes but were eliminated in their first matches. All three Tufts pairs, including Stewart/LaCara, Lam/Hollender and Hoguet/Schils played in consolation matches after their losses and won those matches 3-0.
