ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Christopher Newport women's tennis team pulled off a huge victory against one of the top doubles tandems in the country on Tuesday before suffering an 8-1 loss at the hands of perennial power Carnegie Mellon. Tessa Trate and Raine Weis partnered at No. 1 doubles to topple the 5th-ranked duo in the nation for the Tartans, Lindy Cornwall and Bin Zheng. 

After registering an 11-1 record in tournament play this fall, Cornwall and Zheng were picked as a top-five tandem after winning the ITA Southeast Regional Championship. The CMU duo had already played 20 matches together in 2021-22 while Weis and Trate came into the bout with just five career matches together. 

On Tuesday, it was the talented underclassmen for Christopher Newport toppling the 2021 National Quarterfinalists and All-Americans for Carnegie Mellon. Trate and Weis paired up for an 8-6 win over the highly-touted opponent to get Christopher Newport on the board in doubles play. 

The Captains narrowly missed taking a 2-1 lead in a marathon breaker at No. 3 doubles where Kiersten Chang and Mia Linam were stung 8-7 (15-13).

The close matches continued into singles play where Trate forced a breaker in the first set against No. 35 Sarah Yang before falling 7-6 (2), 6-4 on the top line. At No. 2, Weis won the first set, 7-5, against No. 9 Crystal Zhou, before the nationally-ranked Tartan managed to outlast CNU's rookie in a 5-7, 7-6 (2), 10-3 final. Two more individual bouts were stretched to a third-set tiebreaker whe Linam and Zheng traded sets at No. 4 and Karina Crivtonencu battled back for a second set win against Megan Qiang. Linam suffered a 6-1, 4-6, 10-6 loss and Crivtonencu was done in by a 6-1, 2-6, 10-4 final. 

Christopher Newport will close out the Orlando trip on Wednesday with a morning matchup against RPI.