ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- Playing at the Dwight Davis Tennis Center in St. Louis, Missouri, a pair of Christopher Newport women's tennis players appeared in both the singles and doubles draw at the NCAA Division III Individual National Championships on Saturday.
Tessa Trate, an emergency alternate added to the singles bracket, and
Raine Weis each suffered first round losses in the singles bracket before dropping their lone match in doubles play as well.
The duo took the court in the morning for singles play first as Trate was lined up against Middlebury All-American Sahana Raman and Weis was slotted to play Case Western Reserve All-American Hannah Kassaie. In their doubles match on Saturday afternoon, Weis and Trate were set to play against Babson All-American Olivia Soffer and playing partner Matia Cristiani.
Despite being thrust into the tournament the night before play, Trate put together a solid outing against Raman before being eliminated in a 6-2, 6-1 final. In the first round, Trate captured three games, and finishes her storied career with 37 victories in singles play. She became the first player in CNU Women's Tennis history to garner first team All-Conference honors in both singles and doubles in all four years of her career.
In the other Round of 32 singles matchup for CNU, junior
Raine Weis was locked in a highly-competitive match with Kassaie. The Spartans veteran won the first set 6-4, but Weis was trailing 5-2 before earning a big break in the eighth game of the first set. She then held serve to close the match to 5-4 before Kassaie pulled out the final game for the win. In the second set, it was Weis that held a late lead in the set, 6-5, but Kassaie earned the pivotal 12th-game victory to force a tiebreaker.
In the breaker, Kassaie pulled ahead, 4-1, before Weis won two of the next three to close to within two points, 5-3. Unfortunately for CNU fans, that was as close as the Captains junior would get as Kassaie finished out the second set win with the next two points to win by a final score of 6-4, 7-6 (7-3).
As the two came together to play in the doubles tournament, both tandems held serve in the first set until it was 3-3. From there, the Babson won three straight to earn a 6-3 win in the opener. It was the exact same story in the second set as a key break came in the seventh game, allowing the Beavers to take a 4-3 lead and would hold on for a 6-3, 6-3 finish.
The CNU duo put together one of the historically great careers as a partnership, ranking third all-time in career doubles victories at CNU. They continually made history, becoming the first tandem in program lore to qualify for nationals and earning the highest national ranking for a doubles team ever, at No. 9 in the nation.
