LEXINGTON, Va. -- Capturing one of the biggest victories in program history, Christopher Newport junior
Tessa Trate and sophomore
Raine Weis defeated the nation's top-ranked doubles tandem on Friday evening, 8-7, to headline the Captains performance in a 7-2 loss to No. 10 Sewanee (1-0). Weis also came away with a singles win at No. 1 to sweep her matches in the neutral site battle, but the CNU women's tennis team fell to 0-3 on the season.
Facing arguably the best trifecta of doubles teams in the nation, the Captains put together a hard-fought battle in pairs play. In addition to Trate and Weis' monumental win over the ITA Doubles Champions from the University of the South, Brooke Despriet and Katherine Petty, CNU also got a strong showing at No. 3 from
Kiersten Chang and
Kendra Womack. The Captains' veteran duo locked into a tight struggle with No. 23 Nicole Kowak and Emma Smith in the No. 3 matchup before falling by the narrowest of margins, 8-7.
In the top-25 battle between the tenth-ranked Tigers and 23rd-ranked Captains, CNU faced a Sewanee squad that is ranked No. 2 in the Atlantic South and features two nationally-ranked singles and three nationally-ranked pairs.
Trate and Weis were back-and-forth with the All-American duo before edging out Despriet and Petty by a final score of 8-7. The eye-popping win put the Captains on the board trailing 2-1 heading into singles.
Sewanee clinched the match with the first three wins in singles play, winning at Nos. 2-4. Despriet edged out Trate at No. 2 in a second-set tiebreak (6-2, 7-6 (9-7); Sarah Livingston defeated
Mia Linam at No. 3 (6-2, 6-1); and, Natalia Nassar slipped by Chang in another close matchup (6-3, 7-6 (5).
At No. 1, however, Weis capped an impressive overall performance with a win over Ansley Carpenter (6-4, 7-5). Her first win of the season in singles gave the Captains two team points against the top-ten foe.
Christopher Newport will return to action on Saturday against No. 12 Case Western Reserve University. The match against the Spartans will begin at 11:00 a.m.
