ORLANDO, Fla. -- Freshly minuted a top-25 team according to the ITA Division III Collegiate Rankings, the Christopher Newport women's tennis team faced a stiff challenge as they took on No. 15 Carnegie Mellon at the USTA National Campus in Orlando, Florida. The Captains fell to 4-4 on the season following a 9-0 setback to the Tartans, who improve to 7-4 to start the Spring season.
Two of the top tandems in Division III women's tennis faced off at No. 1 doubles on Thursday morning as a couple of veteran pairings tangled in an exciting back-and-forth bout. For Carnegie Mellon, senior All-American Danna Taylor paired with junior Zoe Angell; for the Captains, it was senior
Tessa Trate and junior
Raine Weis, the third winningest duo in CNU history.
The Captains pair fell behind, 2-0, but bounced back to win three of the next four games in the pro-set to close in within one, 4-3. The Tartans twosome then won three straight to put themselves on the brink of capturing the point, 7-3, but again Trate and Weis rallied for a thrilling comeback. Needing four straight games to force a tiebreaker, that's just what the 2022 NCAA National Qualifiers did for the Captains, blitzing back to tie the match at 7-7.
Unfortunately for CNU fans, the comeback was stifled there as Carnegie Mellon reclaimed the momentum and won the match at No. 1 by a final score of 8-7 (7-3). It wrapped up a 3-0 start for the Tartans as
Kylie Schaefer and
Megan Bauer suffered an 8-5 loss at No. 3 and
Mia Linam and
Samantha Robertson suffered an 8-3 setback at No. 2.
In singles play, two of the six matches went into a third-set tiebreaker as Trate and
Kiersten Chang forced extra time against their opponents at No. 2 and No. 5. Trate rebounded from a first-set loss to Taylor, a nationally-ranked singles player in the top-ten, and cruised to a 6-2 win in the second set. She ultimately suffered a 6-3, 2-6, 1-0 (10-4) loss to Taylor. Chang also fell in the first set before a second set victory; the senior took on Anika Joshi and dropped a 6-4, 2-6, 1-0 (10-4) matchup.
At No. 1, Weis faced off against Sarah Yang and pushed the second set to a seventh game before falling (6-0, 7-5). Linam captured three games in each set at No. 3 against 11th-ranked Divya Venkatarama and Schaefer added five games won in her two-set loss to Elaine Qian at No. 6.
Christopher Newport will close out the Spring Break trip on Sunday against North Central College.
