Panther women beat Tufts tennis

Author: Alex Lovett-Woodsum

The Middlebury women's tennis team had another league matchup this past weekend against Tufts University, beating the Jumbos 7-2 and improving their record to 6-2 in the league and 9-7 overall. Middlebury entered the match ranked 15th in the country, while the Jumbos were close behind at number 19. The win came just days after the NCAA regional rankings were released, putting Middlebury at number four in the Northeast Region with Tufts coming in at the number six spot.

Middlebury Co-Captain Elizabeth Stone '09 commented that "Tufts is a pretty comparable team to Bowdoin, whom we lost to 7-2 a few weeks ago. The win over Tufts shows us that we are capable of beating any of the top NESCAC teams."

Middlebury's number two doubles team of tri-captain Clare Burke '09 and younger sister Anna Burke '12 started off the day with a solid win for Middlebury, defeating Erica Miller and Jennifer LaCara 8-3, followed by another win by the rookie team of Tori Aiello and Alex Guynn 8-4 over Edwina Stewart and Mari Homma from Tufts.

Middlebury's number one team of Stone and Chandra Kurien '09 lost a tough match to the Tufts duo of Meghan McCooey and Julia Browne, who were recently ranked number two in the NCAA Northeast Regional rankings and are also Tufts' number one and two singles players.

Kurien redeemed her doubles loss with a win over McCooey at the number two spot, winning her first set 6-1. McCooey fought back in the second set, but Kurien pulled off the win, defeating her 7-5. Kurien also had a solid win on Tuesday, defeating Cary Gibson at the number three spot.

Number one singles player Aiello lost a tough match to Browne, who was ranked number one in the region by the NCAA. She lost the first set 2-6 but fought back to win the second 6-4 before losing her third set 0-6.

Middlebury swept the rest of the singles matches to seal the 7-2 win. Stone won a close match at the number three spot, coming back from 2-5 down in the first set against Tufts' Erica Miller to win the set 7-5, followed by a 6-4 second set. Clare Burke won easily at number four, defeating Edwina Stewart with a definitive 6-1, 6-0 score. Anna Burke fought through a tough first set loss 0-6 to her opponent to come back and defeat her 6-2, 6-2 in the second and third. Whitney Hanson '11 cleaned up at number six, defeating her opponent 6-2, 6-1.

Coming up this weekend, the women have their last regular season match against the number two-ranked Amherst College team before the NESCAC championship begins.

"This match was really important in setting the tone for how we want to play in the next few weeks," said the elder Burke. "Coming up we have Amherst and then NESCACs, and I think that after losing tough matches to Bowdoin and Williams, we really needed to win this match. And we not only won the match, we won it very decisively."

This win was an important confidence booster for the team leading into a competitive couple of weeks at the end of the season.