The women’s tennis team wrapped up its fall season over the weekend at Bowdoin, competing in singles and doubles matches against Wellesley, Bates and Bowdoin at the Bowdoin Invitational Tournament. This competition was unlike the previous matches of the fall season, as the Jumbos had always either competed in tournament-style competitions with brackets or team matches, consisting of three doubles matches and six singles matches. Over the weekend, however, Tufts played exhibition matches against the three other schools.Despite the fact that the matches did not contribute to a team win or advance the Jumbos in competitive tournaments, Tufts did perform well. The team played a total of 24 singles matches, winning 17 of them. In addition, it played 12 doubles matches, winning nine of them.
The weekend allowed the new players on the team to gain valuable experience that they will take with them into the spring season. The next official action for the Jumbos will be during spring break in 2015, but until then the team has a chance to regroup and reflect on a fall season full of great tennis, competition and growth.
"The team did extremely well this weekend," freshman Lauren Louks said. "It was a great way to end the fall season."
On Friday, the entire team played a singles match and the Jumbos emerged victorious in seven of the eight matches. First-year Aandrita Deb defeated Elena Mandzhukova of Bates by a score of 6-3, 6-1,while Louks beat Wellesley sophomore Carina Chen by a score of 6-2, 6-0. Sophomore Conner Calabro added a third lopsided victory for Tufts, besting Bates sophomore Kate Rosenthal by a score of 6-0, 6-1. Sophomore Chelsea Hayashi added to the win column for Tufts as well, beating EmmaBlakely of Bates 6-1, 6-0. Sophomore Jacqueline Baum also won her match over Dasha Kostikina of Wellesley by a score of 6-3, 6-1.The two closest wins for the Jumbos came from sophomore Alexa Meltzer and first-year Zoe Miller.Meltzer played against Andjela Stojkovic of Wellesley in a highly competitive match that required a super-tiebreaker to determine the winner. Meltzer lost the first set 6-3, but responded to win the second set 6-2. The super-tiebreaker was a nailbiter, with Meltzer pulling out the win for Tufts by a score of 13-11. Miller’s match was similar. She played against Bowdoin freshman Cory Alini, and lost the first set 6-2. But Miller regrouped to blank Alini in the second set, winning 6-0, and prevailed in the super-tiebreaker by a score of 10-8.All eight Tufts players played doubles throughout the weekend, and each player played with the same partner for each match.Meltzer played with Calabro, Miller played with Deb, Hayashi played with sophomore Hannah Conroy and Louks played with Baum. The Jumbos won six out of the eight doubles matches on Friday and three out of four on Saturday. Two of the four doubles teams went undefeated over the weekend. Meltzer and Calabro won their matches on Friday against Sojung Lee and Carina Chen of Wellesley 8-6 and then Tess Trinka and Pilar Giffenig of Bowdoin by the same score. They then beat Mandzhukova and Elizabeth Erbafina of Bates 8-5 on Saturday.Hayashi and Conroy also won both their Friday matches with identical scores, as they defeated Bates’ Madeline Stein and Alexandra Hakusui and then Blakely and Olivia Voccola of Bates as well, by scores of 8-1 each time. On Saturday, they beat the Wellesley pair of Samantha Stone and Victoria Wu 8-6."Jacqueline and I played very well as a team," Louks said. "We are very good at communicating and our styles compliment each other very well. One thing we need to work on is closing out the match when we are up."
The weekend allowed the new players on the team to gain valuable experience that they will take with them into the spring season. The next official action for the Jumbos will be during spring break in 2015, but until then the team has a chance to regroup and reflect on a fall season full of great tennis, competition and growth.
"My best memory of the fall season was when we won our match against Babson," Louks said. "After I won the deciding match the whole team was so excited and everyone was hugging each other, and it drastically compared to the previous match where I lost the deciding match against MIT."
