The women’s tennis team will face nationally ranked Brown and Yale on the road this weekend in search of its first Ivy League win of the season. Columbia will be on the road until its season finale at home against Princeton. The Lions (4-11, 0-3 Ivy) are coming off three consecutive 6-1 defeats at the hands of Cornell, Harvard, and Dartmouth. No. 61 Brown, on the other hand, has won 12 of its last 13 dual matches, falling only to No. 47 Princeton last weekend.
“I’m excited,” head coach Ilene Weintraub said, “about the chance to play teams of this level. The [Columbia] team will play up. I think they will go in relaxed and with nothing to lose. These are both beatable teams if we play our best.”
Brown, the Lions’ first opponent, enters this weekend’s matches with a dual-match record of 16-3—they are 2-1 within the Ivy League. Brown won the doubles point in its last outing against Princeton, but was swept in each of the six matches. The Bears carried a 12-match winning streak into that contest, and will be looking to start a new streak against the Lions. Against the Tigers in the singles matches, all but one of the Bears were defeated in straight sets. Brown’s two Ivy wins came against Penn and Yale. The Bears upended the Bulldogs—who had been the highest ranked Ivy team at No. 45—with a 4-3 win. Brown won the doubles point in that match, which proved to be decisive as the teams split the singles 3-3.
Yale, who hosts Columbia on Saturday, has a record of 11-5 this spring. Of the five losses suffered by the Bulldogs, three came at the hands of top-ranked opponents, including No. 16 Vanderbilt. At the top of the lineup at No. 1 singles for Yale is reigning Ivy League Player of the Year and first team all-Ivy player Janet Kim. Kim, a senior, comes in at 1-2 in Ivy play this season, and is ranked No. 124 nationally in singles. Last season, Nina Suda played No. 1 singles for the Lions against Kim, winning the first set but ultimately losing the match 14-12 in a third set super-tiebreak.
The Lions come in with three consecutive losses, but have seen contributions from players in each of those matches. Seniors Suda and Marlena Hall, along with freshman Eliza Matache, have all won matches for the Lions in Ivy play.
“The potential is there for them to play at that level consistently,” Weintraub said of her players, “but sometimes they don’t allow themselves to play at that level every day. In practice, they push each other every day.”
The Lions have struggled in the doubles matches, losing that point in each Ivy contest.
“I think in doubles, we are going to focus on holding serve,” Weintraub said. “We have gotten broken a couple times when we shouldn’t have. One break may decide an eight-game pro set, and we are looking at how we warm up and prepare right before a match.”
Weintraub was effusive in her praise for the two freshmen on the starting lineup.
“They are as good as anyone in the Ivies,” she said. “Nicole believes she can beat anyone, she never fears an opponent based on her ranking, or her school. She believes she can win any match, and so do I.”
The Lions will play the Bears on Friday at 2 p.m., and will face off against the Bulldogs in New Haven on Saturday at noon.
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