The Dartmouth women's tennis team traveled to Winston-Salem, N.C., for its first two matches of the season, falling 5-2 to the University of Richmond on Saturday and 7-0 to No. 42 Wake Forest University on Sunday.
The first test for the Big Green (0-2, 0-0 Ivy) came on Saturday when the team faced Richmond (1-1, 0-0 Atlantic 10), who had won four consecutive Atlantic 10 conference titles before finishing third last season. The Spiders had just come off of a 6-1 blowout at the hands of Wake Forest and went into the match looking for its first win of the season.
The Big Green, on the other hand, was without all of its juniors this past fall, including two of the team's three co-captains, and had just over a week of official practice together before its first match.
"It's really exciting for all of the juniors to come back after being off in the fall and see that everyone has gotten better," co-captain Jesse Adler '10 said. "It is motivating and it really pushes us to play our best."
In the doubles competition, the Big Green's Molly Scott '11 and co-captain Mary Beth Winingham '10 took down the top Spider duo of Pamela Duran and Erin Clark in a tiebreaker, 8-7 (6). Duran and Clark were both named first-team All Atlantic 10 last season and were the No. 10 doubles pairing in the latest ITA East Rankings.
The Big Green had already lost the doubles point, however, as it dropped each of the second and third doubles match by the score of 8-6.
Having lost the doubles point, the Big Green needed to win four of six singles matches to take home a victory, yet was only able to muster two. The bright spots for Dartmouth were Scott, who took down Duran, 6-3, 6-2, at No. 1 singles and Adler, who also won in straight sets, beating sophomore Kelly Tidwell, 6-4, 6-3.
"Everyone played really well," Adler said. "It was 5-2 but it was really close, and there were a bunch of matches that could have gone either way. I think that for the first match of the season, everyone felt like they were in pretty good form."
The match came down to the two three-set contests, and the Big Green found itself on the losing end of both. Winingham fought hard against Clark, winning the first set 6-3, but struggled in the next two sets, losing each 6-1.
Also making it to the third set was Ryan Reichel '11, who won her first set against freshman Joanna Matuszczyk, 6-1, before dropping the next two, 6-4, 6-1. Reichel had been battling injury leading up to the match and was not in the lineup Sunday, replaced by Georgiana Smyser '11, who has also been battling injuries and only played doubles in the match against Richmond.
Against Wake Forest, the Big Green fielded the same doubles teams as against Richmond, with similar results. This time it was the freshman pairing of Carissa King '12 and Shelley Carpeni '12, who pulled through for the lone victory at the No. 3 spot, 8-4. Adler and Smyser dropped the No. 2 match, 8-3, while Scott and Winingham fell in the rubber match, 8-6, to give the Demon Deacons the doubles point.
In singles, first to finish was Carpeni, who lost to Demon Deacon freshman Ryann Cutillo, 6-1, 6-0, playing at No. 6. A 6-2, 6-2, loss from Carley Markovitz '10 at No. 5 meant that the Big Green needed to win all of the top four singles contests to get the victory.
The Demon Deacons won the first set of each individual match to make the task all the more difficult, and the task proved to be an insurmountable margin. Smyser lost at No. 3, 6-4, 7-6 (5) sealing the victory for Wake Forest.
Straight-set losses from Adler, Scott and Winingham ended the day for the Big Green.
"The match was a lot closer than the final score suggested," Winingham said. "We are right there with that team on any given day."
While the singles matches were close on Sunday, the Big Green lost each tiebreak and had trouble closing out sets.
"Considering that all the matches were close, we need to focus on closing out sets and concentrating hard when the score is tight," Winingham said. "That just comes down to practice."
Scott's victory on Saturday solidified her No. 11 ITA East singles ranking by defeating Duran, who is currently No. 12. Last season, Scott lost to Duran, 6-1, 6-1 at the Wake Forest Classic in just her second collegiate match.
Sasha Kulikova, Scott's opponent at Wake Forest, is currently ranked No. 59 nationally. Scott and Kulikova played to a tie-breaker, but Kulikova prevailed, 6-4, 7-6 (2).
Scott will have a chance to improve on her ranking in two weeks when the Big Green faces Boston College, which currently has the No. 4 and No. 6 players in the East singles rankings.
The team returns to action Saturday, Feb. 7 when it will travel to Boston to take on Boston University before returning to Hanover on Sunday, Feb. 8 for its home opener against Boston College. The home match is at 2:30 p.m. at the Alexis Boss Tennis Center.