The men’s tennis team was victorious in both of its matches this weekend, defeating Harvard, 5-2, and sweeping Dartmouth, 7-0. The win over the Crimson marked the first time Cornell has beaten Harvard since 1960. The Red improved to 11-6 (2-1 Ivy). The women’s team split its matches, losing to Harvard, 6-1, before toppling Dartmouth, 5-2. The Red improved to 7-5 (1-2 Ivy).
Against Harvard, the men overcame the loss of the doubles point by winning the top-5 singles matches. Senior Brett McKeon, juniors Josh Raff, Nick Brunner and Dan Brous and freshman Kyle Doppelt were all victorious in their matches.
“We did well this weekend. Nobody beats Cornell tennis 46 years in a row. It was a really sweet victory to beat Harvard,” Raff said. “We were pretty down after last weekend; losing to Columbia wasn’t a good start. Harvard is a team I want to beat probably more than any Ivy League team.”
Freshman Josh Goldstein was also pleased with the team’s efforts over the weekend.
“It was a huge weekend for our team. … It was the first time in the 17 years our coach has been at Cornell that we’ve had two wins back-to-back on the same weekend,” he said. “It was as strong a weekend as we could possibly have had.”
The Red was able to take the momentum obtained from the Harvard victory to win every single match against Dartmouth, including all three doubles matches.
“For Dartmouth, we knew going in that we were the stronger team, but we had to make sure to guard against a possible let down,” Raff said. “However, we got it together and took it to them, and the better team won.”
The women’s team did not have quite the same success that the men’s team had, as it fell to Harvard before defeating Dartmouth. The Harvard match was much closer than the score would indicate, according to freshman Elizabeth Googe.
“Going in against Harvard, we knew it would be a tough match. [Head] Coach [Laura Glitz] said before that match that our goal would be to focus on the thing that we could control, such as our effort,” she said. “For the doubles point, all three of our doubles matches were extremely close.”
The doubles team of Googe and freshman Shayna Miller fell 8-7 (3) to the Crimson’s Eva Wang and Stephanie Schnitter. The second and third doubles matches were also close, as the Red teams of junior Kasia Preneta and senior Liying Wang along with freshman Catherine Duboc and senior Mollie Edison lost by scores of 8-4 and 8-5, respectively.
However, the Red recovered nicely against Dartmouth, as Googe would attest.
“We knew that against Dartmouth we had a really good chance of winning. The doubles point gave us a lot of momentum going into the singles matches, knowing we only needed to take three of them,” she said. “It was our first Ivy win of the season. … It was a really good feeling to win that match.”
Archived article by David Sims
Sun Staff Writer