While most Cornell students were fully submerged in a fall break stupor, the women’s tennis team was facing elite national competition at the Women’s Collegiate Invitational. This year’s event, based at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, N.Y., brought mixed results for the Red, who competed in both the singles and doubles draws.
The relentless rain, which covered much of the Northeast over the weekend, forced the relocation and cancellation of many matches, but did not prevent the Red from getting in some competition against fierce regional and national opponents. The team was shuffled around, as several players were moved to the Army and Columbia campuses in order for matches to take place. Coach Laura Glitz said she was pleased overall by the performance in both singles and doubles.
“We beat a lot of Ivy League teams,” Glitz said.
The heart of the girls Ivy League schedule isn’t until the spring, but Glitz noted the importance of the fall matches.
“We want use [the fall matches] to get better for the spring,” Glitz said. “We want to peak in the Ivy season.”
The freshmen tandem of Elizabeth Googe and Tamara John was among the notable doubles performances. After a convincing 8-3 victory over the Army team in the A1 doubles draw, they lost 8-3 to the fourth-seeded Clemson duo. Despite the loss, Glitz said that their second match was still an accomplishment because they took more games off the Clemson team than anyone else in the draw.
The Red’s pairing of senior Mollie Edinson and freshman Shanya Miller played in the A2 draw and lost their first round match, 8-5, against second-seeded Texas A&M, but came back strong and defeated Ivy League foe Dartmouth, 8-3, in the consolation round.
On the singles side, junior Kasia Preneta had a big first round match in the A1 singles flight, taking down Danielle Petrisho from Kentucky, before losing her second match to Eva Wang of Harvard. “I was able to hit the ball deeper,” Preneta said, of her first round match. “She would have taken advantage if I hit short.”
Preneta also played doubles in the B1 bracket with Kara Maloy – a pairing that Glitz said was effective last year. Their experience helped, as they bounced back from a first round loss with an 8-4 victory over Dartmouth, before dropping a close 8-6 match to Columbia.
“We got used to the courts and got better in doubles,” Preneta said, who added that she was pleased with her communication with Maloy.
Googe, Miller, John and freshman Catherine Duboc were able to show some of their hard work in the singles draws, as Googe and Miller both won consolation matches against opponents from Boston College. Duboc, the D1 bracket’s fourth seed, won a tight match against Rachel Wagner of Texas A&M, before falling to Laura Trimble of Princeton. John dropped her first round match in B1 singles, before coming up on the short end of a very tight 7-6, 7-5 bout with Julia Roach of N.C. State.
Duboc and junior Nisha Suda also had a competitive match, in which they took the three-seed of the B2 doubles draw into a tie break, before falling 9-8.
The Red will travel to Bucknell this weekend to build on this mixed showing. “The situation was difficult because we were spread out, but we stayed focused,” Preneta said.
Archived article by Josh Krieger
Sun Contributor