Burke '09 leads women's tennis in MIT tourney

Author: Alex Lovett-Woodsum

The Middlebury women's tennis team competed in the ITA New England Region Championships this weekend at MIT, battling injuries, illness and rainy weather.

The tournament is an individual, single-elimination style tournament (with a backdraw) in which 64 singles players and 32 doubles teams from small colleges around New England compete for a chance to advance to the ITA Small College Nationals.

The Middlebury team was represented in singles by co-captains Elizabeth Stone '09 and Clare Burke '09, as well as Chandra Kurien '09 and Tori Aiello '09 and in doubles by the teams of Anna Burke '12/Elizabeth Emery '09 and Clare Burke/Aiello.

Seeded player Clare Burke won her first two rounds of singles matches with ease, defeating both Diana Fiumefreddo of Smith College and Jes Huang of Babson College 6-2, 6-0 before falling to number-two seed Brittany Berckes of Amherst College in the round of 16.

Also seeded was Aiello, who won her first match against Catherine Teague of Wheaton College before losing a tough second-round match against Laken King of Amherst. Aiello won the first set 6-3, lost the second set 6-4 and then lost in a tight super tiebreaker 11-9 for the abbreviated third set.

Already nursing a sore ankle, Stone fought through a tough first round match against Alexis Jacobson of Vassar, winning in a super tiebreaker. However, she aggravaded a quadricep injury during the match, and lacking full strength, lost in her second round match to the number four seeded Julia Browne from Tufts. Browne ultimately went on to win the singles title,

The doubles team of Burke/Emery had a tough draw and fell in the first round to the number-four ranked team from Bowdoin.

On top of that tough loss, the team of Aiello/Burke was upset in the first round by an unseeded team from Wellesley.

"Results-wise it wasn't stellar," said Coach Mike Morgan, "but for where we've been with our health, we did a pretty solid job and everyone is improving. I'm not too worried about where we are relative to other teams at this point; the important thing is that we're moving towards where we want to be."

Indeed, the team certainly has had a number of obstacles to overcome already in the season - of their 11 player roster, four players are injured, one is sick, and one is abroad.

Despite these setbacks, both Coach Morgan and the team are very positive about the future.

"Even though we are definitely a little beat up right now and we are not getting the results that we would like thus far, this is just giving us more motivation to recover and work hard in the off-season, "said Burke. "Everything we are working for in the fall and in the off-season is to get the results we want in the spring."

Coach Morgan and the team continue to look for unique ways to move forward and improve as well as bond with the five new first-years.

After the Williams Invitational, the team had a day of team bonding which included crawling on all fours up a rocky stream, running and fully-clothed swimming in a pond.

"Although it sounds very intense," said Clare Burke, "it was actually a lot of fun."

The team looks forward to the Gail Smith doubles tournament this coming weekend at Middlebury as an opportunity to continue to improve its game and confidence.