The No. 58 Harvard women’s tennis team (12-10, 2-4 Ivy) finished the weekend with a win and then a loss against Ancient Eight opponents No. 69 Yale (8-12, 2-4) and No. 72 Brown (14-10, 2-4), respectively.
Coming off its first Ivy win last week, a 4-3 tilt over Princeton, the Crimson looked to have a winning a streak going in New Haven on Friday afternoon before getting back to Cambridge only to lose at the hands of Brown on Sunday.
HARVARD 6, YALE 1
The pair of sophomore Annika Ringblom and freshman Sabrina Xiong put the Crimson on the front foot with a strong 6-2 performance in doubles. After a loss at No. 3 doubles, the No. 1 pair of junior June Lee and freshman Erica Oosterhout capped the crucial doubles point with a tightly contested win, 7-5.
The singles play was less contested than doubles play. Besides Lee’s loss, the Crimson won all other matches and went back to Cambridge with a resounding 6-1 win. Freshman Nikki Kallenberg, Oosterhout, Ringblom, Xiong and senior Amy He all won in straight sets.
The win improved the team's away record to 5-3 on the year.
“We always play a lot better as a visiting team,” Ringblom said.
The win extended the team's total to 12 on the year, five more than the squad's final tally last season.
BROWN 4, HARVARD 3
After one day of rest, the Crimson was back at it against Brown at the Beren Tennis Center on Sunday afternoon.
In the doubles contest, Ringblom and Xiong were beaten 6-0. After freshman Isabel Jasper and Kallenberg won 6-3, it was up to Oosterhout and Lee to win the doubles point for Harvard. But the pair lost, 7-6, handing the early advantage to the Bears.
After winning the doubles point, Brown simply needed to split the remaining six singles matches. Oosterhout, Ringlblom and He would all win in straight sets, but Lee, Kallenberg and Xiong would all suffer defeats handing Brown the match with a 4-3 score.
With the loss, Harvard remains winless at home in Ivy League competition.
“I think that we're doing pretty well at this point in the season,” Xiong said.“We could definitely be doing better, but every match we lost was 3-4 and could have gone either way.”
Harvard's last four losses have all come by a score of 4-3. In three of those matchups, the doubles point was the deciding factor.
—Staff writer Max McEvoy can be reached at max.mcevoy@thecrimson.com
Read more in Sports
Baseball Takes Three of Four Against YaleRecommended Articles
-
Women's Tennis Takes Home Singles, Doubles Titles At Brown InvitationalRoommates, best friends, and teammates. Sophomores Nikki Kallenberg and Annika Ringblom satisfy all those descriptions, but for one, hard-fought match, they met as opponents in the championship match of the Brown Invitational top singles flight.
-
Women's Tennis Goes Down In Season OpenerIn a close match, the Crimson was unable to come back from a 3-1 deficit, falling at the hands of Ivy rival Cornell, 4-3.
-
Women's Tennis Finds Success at ECAC TournamentFacing off against fellow Ivy foes, the Harvard women's tennis team tacked on its first two wins of the 2016 season.
-
Women's Tennis Winless Against William and Mary, Old DominionThe Harvard Women’s tennis team dropped both matches this weekend against William and Mary and Old Dominion. After last weekend’s sweep of BU, Maryland, and Marist, the Crimson stumbled to two loses in two days down in Virginia: 5-2 against the Tribe, and 4-2 against the Blue.
-
Women's Tennis Drops Pair of Home Ivy MatchesDespite a five-match winning streak that spanned spring break, the Harvard women’s tennis team (10-8, 0-2 Ivy) fell to Cornell (12-7, 1-2 Ivy) and Columbia (13-4, 3-0 Ivy) this past weekend at home. Its recent success in California over the break included victories against multiple non-Ivy teams—Providence, Rhode Island, Loyola Marymount, UCSB, and Fresno State. However, the Crimson was unable to carry the momentum home for its first two Ancient Eight matches.
