The men's and women's tennis teams both hosted the Colgate Red Raiders on Saturday to close out their winter seasons. Both will open their spring seasons with a swing through California starting on March 17.
The women opened up their match with three fairly easy doubles wins. Sarita Yardi '02 and Carly Bashleben '02 continued their return to midseason form with a convincing 8-0 victory over Colgate's Jen Buntman and Lorraine Coulter.
Captain Courtney Smalley '01 and Catherine Crandall '04 kept up their rapid growth as a functioning unit and downed Lauren Erikson and Lisa Onseng 8-2. Fellow '04s Arden Fredeking and Kelsey Surbaugh completed the doubles sweep with an 8-3 stomping of Emily Wenink and Lindsey Suffredini.
With the doubles point in hand, the Big Green proceeded to roll through the singles competition.
Yardi, Bashleben, Smalley and Crandall won straight set victories at No.'s 1-4 singles. Yardi even managed to record a perfect match, winning 6-0, 6-0 over Erikson.
At No. 5 singles, Fredeking found herself in a dog-fight with Suffredini. The West Virginia native lost the first set 6-4, but dug her heels in and won consecutive tiebreakers to bring home the point.
Katie Lopez '04 saw her first singles action in a match this season and the first of her career at No. 6. Lopez struggled through the first set against Jessica Fede falling 2-6.
The pre-season walk-on then turned up her game a notch and grabbed back the second set at 6-4. The third set saw a back-and-forth war result in a 7-5 victory for Lopez and a 7-0 sweep for the Big Green.
The men did not fare quite as well in the early part of their match, as the Red Raiders brought their A-games to the doubles courts. Jeff Sloves '02 and Drew Dinkmeyer '04 lost an incredibly close match at first doubles, 9-7 to Eric Saccullo and Evan Paushter.
At second doubles, Neal Bobba '04 and Borko Kereshi '04 did their part in downing Josh Cohn and Zanler Lowe 8-6 in another tight match. The third doubles pairing of Vito Menza '04 and Kaveh Boghraty '04 had some trouble and fell to Andrew Davis and Jon Bedard which gave the doubles point to the visitors.
Dartmouth rallied quickly and hammered home their superiority in the singles competition. Bobba, Dinkmeyer and Koreshi won easily at No.'s 2-4 singles in straight sets.
Jon Powell '03 and Harlan Thompson '01 added their own straight-set victories at No's. 5 and 6 singles, defeating Bedard and Lowe respectively.
The toughest match came at first singles, where Sloves faced off against Saccullo. Saccullo took the first set 4-6, only to have Sloves come right back and nab the second at 6-3.
The third set was played for pure pride, as Dartmouth had already captured the match. In a tough battle that went down to the wire, the hard-serving Big Green No. 1 took a 7-6 victory to claim the match, and an overall 6-1 victory for the Big Green.
