Dartmouth (15-4, 3-3 Ivy) battled in front of a home crowd against Yale (11-8, 7-0 Ivy), with hopes of spoiling the Bulldogs' perfect conference record.
"We were definitely trying to deny them a perfect season," captain Maggie Suydam '08 said. "That was our goal."
But the Bulldogs snatched the win in the end, giving Yale its first Ivy League championship since 1989 and first trip to the NCAA championships in the program's history.
"We were inches away from getting a win," Suydam said.
The crowd of Dartmouth students and Hanover locals at the Topliff courts on Sunday watched almost every match with bated breath as all but one match were forced into playing at least one extra game.
"It was really, really competitive," captain Megan Zebroski '08 said.
The match came down to the final game between Mary Beth Winingham '10 and Yale freshman Lindsay Clark. The last moments of the match were packed full of match points and heated rallies, but Clark prevailed in the tie break, 8-6, with a final match tally of 1-6, 6-4, 7-6 (6).
"[Winingham] competed so well. I was so proud of her," Zebroski said. "She fought off four match points before the tiebreaker in the third set ... It was disappointing not to be able to come away with the win we had worked so hard for."
Suydam agreed that the team was not disappointed to have lost to such a competitive team by so close of a margin.
"Coming off last year 0-7 [in Ivy League play], and now we were really close to beating Yale -- that's a great turn around and something that we should be proud of," Suydam said.
Dartmouth began the matchwith dominant doubles play, claiming the doubles point for the Big Green with wins at No. 1 and No. 3 doubles and a tie-break loss at No. 2 doubles.
Zebroski and Molly Scott '11 faced serious competition against Yale's No. 2 doubles team of junior Janet Kim and sophomore Jessica Rhee, who are ranked No. 60 in the country.
But the Big Green's senior-freshman duo prevailed, picking up its 14th doubles win of the year in a 9-7 comeback.
Winingham and Jesse Adler '10 just barely gave up their No. 2 doubles match, 9-8, with a tiebreak score of 7-3.
At No. 3 doubles, Suydam and Georgiana Smyser '11 defeated their opponents to gain the doubles point for the Big Green, 8-5.
Scott dropped her first set at No. 1 singles, 6-1, but looked like she was going to turn it around in the later sets.
Scott rallied to take several more games from Kim, but it came too late as Kim took the second set, 7-5.
Zebroski endured a similar result at No. 2 singles, forcing her opponent to deliver in an extra game in both the first and second sets before ultimately falling, 7-6, 7-5.
Smyser had one of the cleanest victories of the match for Dartmouth at No. 5 singles, downing Bulldog freshman Stevi Petrelli in the second set to clinch the match, 7-6, 6-3.
No. 6 singles player Ryan Reichel '11 was overcome in straight sets, 6-1, 6-1, by Yale freshman Lauren Ritz, who is undefeated in Ivy League competition.
Adler got some retribution for her earlier doubles defeat in the No. 4 singles contest against Yale sophomore Sarah Lederhandler in a match that threatened to go into a third set. However Adler delivered the win, 6-3, 7-5.
Yale's victory makes the Bulldogs the sole Ancient Eight champions, preventing a two-team playoff with University of Pennsylvania (11-7, 6-1 Ivy) for a shot at a berth to the NCAA championships.
"We don't really like Penn," Suydam said. "So that was like the one redeeming fact of last match, that Penn was not the Ivy champ."
The Big Green finishes up its season against Harvard (2-15, 2-3 Ivy) this Wednesday in Hanover.
If Dartmouth can pick up the win against the Crimson, which Dartmouth women's tennis has only beaten twice in its history, the Big Green will earn its first winning season in the Ivy League since the 1999-2000 season.
