In continuing their fall seasons, members of the men and women’s tennis squads had posted mixed results in different competitions over the past week.
The women’s tennis team only brought one doubles pairing to the ITA Tournament hosted by Army in West Point, N.Y. The doubles team of senior Mollie Edinson and Shayna Miller won their first match, 8-1, against a Hampshire team.
However, the doubles team then fell in a tight match against Columbia’s pairing of Marlena Hall and Nina Suda. The match went to a tiebreaker with a final score of 9-8. The loss meant that the Red’s doubles team fell into the consolation round.
On the men’s side, the team had a strong showing on the first day of competition at the Northeast Regional Championships held at Dartmouth, as the Red won its first three matches. In addition, sophomore Tongle Yu, senior Brett McKeon, and junior Josh Raff had byes in the first round. However, on the second day of play, the team struggled, losing five-out-of-seven matches – with McKeon, Yu, junior Nick Brunner, and junior Dan Brous losing their respective singles matches, and Brous and junior Charn Bak dropping their doubles match.
On the second day of play, the No. 1 seeded doubles team of Raff and Brunner defeated Hofstra’s Matt Schor and Rob Storzo, 8-1, and Raff also won his singles match, 7-6, 6-3, against Christian Guevara from Virginia Tech.
On the third day of play, Raff lost 6-1, 6-1 in his singles match against opponent Dan Henegby of Brown and Raff and Brunner defeated Virginia Tech’s team of David Rosenthal and Guevara, 8-3. Raff and Brunner went on to the quarterfinals, where they were beaten, 8-3, by Yale’s tandem of Brandon Wei and Josh Lederman.
“Nick and Josh were playing to win the whole thing. Quarterfinals is not bad, but the expectations were higher,” Cornell men’s head coach Barry Schoonmaker said of the doubles team’s performance.
When asked about improvements that the team could make, Schoonmaker said that, “we need to work on closing out matches. We need to not just close the door, but slam it shut.”
“The results were okay, but we did hope to accomplish more. We fell short of the goals that we had hoped to accomplish” Schoonmaker said.
The men’s team will host the Cornell Fall Indoor Invitational next weekend at the Reis Tennis Center, while the women will compete in the Big Green Invitational in Hanover, N.H.
Archived article by Catherine Bourque
Sun Contributor