After another weekend of Ivy League play, women’s tennis has yet to secure a league victory.
The team battled against Penn on Friday at the Reis Tennis Center, where they suffered a 0-5 loss. A roadtrip to Princeton to take on the Tigers produced similar results, ending the day with a 0-4 loss.
Past performance against both of the weekend’s competitors was not in favor of the Red — and, unfortunately, history repeated itself. Against the Tigers, the Red suffered a shutout 0-7 loss last season. As for the Quakers, the most recent Cornell victory transpired in the 2015-16 season.
Despite past results, the team went into the match with a clean slate.
“We are a really young team, so we just went out there and gave it all that we had without thinking about anything, especially past results,” freshman Maria Adiaconitiei said. “We were focused on our play in the present and I think we showed a lot of fight.”
This weekend against Penn, early doubles victories in the second and third spots by the Quakers (13-5, 2-2 Ivy League) set the tone for the rest of the match. Cornell’s duo of Adiaconitiei and senior Mariko Iinuma struggled to compete with Penn’s Iuliia Bryzgalova and OJ Singh, dropping the set at 6-2. Carolyn Xie and Sarah Xu defeated freshmen Sarah Campbell and Khary Pryce, 6-3.
The early losses precluded freshmen pair Valerie Ho and Katherine Nguyen from finishing their doubles match against the 48th-ranked doubles team in the nation. The Quakers’ Marija Curnic and Marta Kowalska possess a 10-3 record in the number one doubles spot. Cornell’s duo, however, gained the upper hand in the match early on by converting on a break point. The fierce match was unfortunately halted at 3-3.
The singles round proved equally unfavorable for the Red (6-14, 0-5 Ivy League), losing each match in straight sets.
At the number one spot, Iinuma suffered a quick 6-1, 6-2 loss to #91 nationally-ranked Iuliia Bryzgalova. Campbell, at the fifth spot, suffered a similar fate, surrendering a 6-3, 6-0 loss to OJ Singh. Another loss at the third spot ended the day in favor of the Quakers.
A trip to Princeton (16-4, 5-0 Ivy League) set the team up for another uphill battle.
Princeton, the 39th-ranked team in the nation, is undefeated in Ivy play so far this season with comfortable wins against Penn, Dartmouth, Harvard, Columbia and now Cornell under its belt. The Tigers’ win against Cornell marks its twelfth consecutive win against Ivy League competition. To add insult to injury, the Red played the Tigers on its home courts, where Princeton boasts an untarnished 4-0 record.
The Tigers’ domination began early in the doubles round, where the Red managed to gather a measly total of four games against their opponents. Ho and Nguyen endured a 6-0 loss against Princeton’s Nicole Kalhorn and Brianna Shvets. Adiaconitei and Iinuma could only scrounge together one game against their opponents. Cambell and Pryce did not finish their match, which stood at a score of 5-3.
Singles had a similar result, with Campbell losing 6-1, 6-0 at the fifth spot, Katherine Nguyen 6-1, 6-1 at the third spot, and Khary Pryce 6-3, 6-1 at the sixth spot.
“We need to work on not making the same mistakes over and over again,” Adiaconitei said. “We have a good idea of what it is that is causing us to lose matches, and we just need to make sure that we are working on it in practice so we don’t make those mistakes in matches.”
The Red have two more matches until Ivy play comes to a close. Next weekend, the team will stay in Ithaca to take on Harvard and Dartmouth on Saturday and Sunday, both at 12 p.m.