PASADENA, Calif. -- The nationally-ranked Christopher Newport women's tennis team suffered a second consecutive loss to a top-20 team in California after a 6-3 defeat to No. 19 Caltech on Thursday afternoon. Junior Tessa Trate continued her hot streak in the Golden State with two more wins to lead the way for CNU. 

Doubles action was highly competitive against the Beavers with Christopher Newport taking the early lead, 1-0, with an 8-5 victory on the top line. Trate paired with Raine Weis for the tandem's 12th win of the season as the Captains downed Anika Arora and Emily Zhang. 

On the second line, Kiersten Chang and Anna Campbell nearly avoided a setback by forcing a tiebreaker, but Yoyo Benchetrit and Nina Solovyeva slipped by the CNU duo 8-7 (4). Megan Bauer and Mia Linam won four games in their doubles match at No. 3, falling to Payal Patel and Teresa Huang. 

Trailing 2-1 heading into singles, the Captains fell to Caltech after the first three singles matches clinched it for the home team. CNU would rally late for wins at No. 2 and 3, with Trate and Linam coming away victorious for the Captains. Both players rallied from down a set to capture the wins for CNU. 

Trate took down Benchetrit by a final score of 2-6, 6-3, 6-3 and Linam defeated Arora 2-6, 6-4, 10-6. 

 CNU will conclude it's annual spring break trip to California on Saturday with a matchup against Claremont-Mudd-Scripps set for 3:30 p.m.