The Dartmouth women's tennis team kicked off its 2008 campaign in promising fashion, traveling to Fort Meyers, Fla. to beat Boston College 4-3 in the Johan Kriek Classic this weekend.
The win over Boston College was the only match that will count towards the Big Green's overall record, as many of the Dartmouth's match-ups in Florida were considered scrimmages for the Big Green.
Dartmouth (1-0, 0-0 Ivy) has now beaten Boston College (0-1, 0-0 ACC)for the second consecutive year. The Eagles are a strong team that hovered around No. 70 on the FILA collegiate tennis rankings last year.
The Big Green was unranked for the majority of last season, though it has climbed as high as No. 53.
Co-captain Megan Zebroski '08 was impressed with her team's first outing.
"I was really impressed with the efforts that everyone put forth in Florida," Zebroski said. "There were some difficult conditions -- it was very windy because we were playing on a lake.
"We're generally an indoor team coming from up here, so we have to get used to playing with the sun and wind, but I think people did a good job dealing with that and still playing good tennis."
The Big Green fared well against higher-ranked opponents in the first day of the Kriek Classic.
Most notably, the Big Green went 3-2 in matches against No. 52 Ohio State, and went 2-2 against No. 32 Wichita State.
Molly Scott '11 defeated Buckeye's freshman Paloma Escobedo in a three-set super-tiebreaker match, 1-6, 6-4, 13-11. Escobedo was the 19th-ranked recruit in the country for the class of 2011. Mary Beth Winningham '10 and Carly Markovitz '10 also notched victories.
In the matchup against Wichita state, all four matches were doubles.
Notching victories against the Shockers was the pair of Scott and co-captain Megan Zebroski '08, and the duo of Markovitz and Ryan Reichel '11.
On the second day, the Big Green faced off against two of the top tennis programs in the country, No. 11 Miami and No. 31 Florida International.
The Big Green only won one match each against the Hurricanes and the Golden Panthers, although Dartmouth proved to be a stiff test for both teams.
Winningham lead the Big Green on the second day. Winningham won in a superbreaker against Miami and paired up with Jesse Adler '10 in doubles against Florida International.
Zebroski was impressed with Winningham's showing in the tournament.
"She competed so hard," Zebroski said. "She had three superbreaker matches, and won two of them 10-8 and she's such a great competitor and it's impressive to be able to do that this early in the season."
In the duel match against Boston College, the Big Green pulled off a thrilling victory coming from behind.
The Eagles had the upper hand early, as they swept all three doubles matches to take the early lead.
But the Big Green roared back to take No. 3 through No. 6 on the singles side for the victory. The victory included gutsy three-set wins by Adler and Reichel.
Adler, playing at the No. 4 singles spot, dropped her first set against Boston College's Alina Sullivan 5-7, but regained her composure to take the next two sets with scores of 6-2 and 6-3 to secure the win and tie the match at 3-3.
The match came down to the No. 5 singles match between Reichel and the Eagles' Sarah Svoboda.
After losing the first set in a tiebreak, Reichel came back to win the next set 6-2 but fell behind 4-0 in the decisive third set.
According to Zebroski, the atmosphere for the final match was electric.
"It was a very exciting match, and a great way to start the duel match season," Zebroski said. "It came down to the final match, and Ryan was down 4-0.
"All of us on the team knew she needed to win, so both teams were lined up on the court and watching. She competed so hard to pull out the match."
The Big Green women will be back on the courts next weekend as they go on the road to take on the University of Maryland at College Park, Md. on Feb. 2 and Georgetown on Feb. 3.
