Complete Box ScoreNEWPORT NEWS, Va. -- In a rematch of the 2014 and 2015 Capital Athletic Conference Championship Semifinals, the 2nd-seeded Christopher Newport women's tennis team flew past the 3rd-seeded Salisbury Sea Gulls, 5-0, earning a second straight trip to the title match. The Captains will travel to top-seeded and 17th-ranked Mary Washington on Saturday, April 23 for the 2016 CAC Championship.
The match was played to decision after the Captains (14-7) swept the doubles points and then won at Nos. 5 and 6 in singles action. Salisbury falls to 13-6 with the setback.
The Captains, playing in front of a home crowd on a beautiful, sun-splashed day at the Eyre Courts, pulled away in two of the doubles matchups and wrestled the third point away from the Sea Gulls at No. 2. Junior
Katie Carlson and sophomore
Kate Huck paired together on the second line, taking on Salisbury's Claudia Lohn and Megan Soderlund, and trailed the Sea Gulls tandem, 6-7, late in the match. The Captains' duo broke the Sea Gulls serve to tie the match, then held to take an 8-7 lead. Then, when Lohn and Soderlund were at game-point with a chance to force a tiebreaker, the Captains' saved four straight game points before setting up their first set- and match-point, where Carlson would place a perfect shot for the win.
At the top spot, CNU sophomore partners
McKinney Harwood and
Alexandra Drye dispatched Salisbury's regionally-ranked tandem of Natalie Savage and Zoe Moffat, 8-2. Savage and Moffat came into the match ranked 8th in the Atlantic South, boasting a 14-3 record at the top spot before falling to the Captains' second-year pairing. Harwood and Drye have played limited matches together this season, picking up their first win of the dual season.
Rounding out doubles action,
Emily Morgan and
Isabelle Wessel cruised to an 8-3 win at No. 3, taking down Taylor Cooper and Megan Knapp for the first point of the day.
In singles, the Captains were leading in five of the six matches when CNU clinched the victory, including an impressive start for Harwood against Savage, also regionally-ranked as a singles player. Harwood carried a 6-2 win in the first set and held a 2-0 lead when the match was called. The CNU wins came at No. 5, behind Drye's effort against Cooper (6-0, 6-2), and at No. 6, where
Meili Konell stepped in for a win over Knapp (6-2, 6-1).
CNU will now look ahead to the CAC Championship, where they will face top-seeded Mary Washington for the second straight year. The Eagles are ten-time defending league champions, and defeated the Captains in the 2015 title bout, 8-1.
