The tennis teams took the court for the first time of this season as the women traveled to the College of William and Mary to compete in the Tribe Invitational, while the men headed to Yale University for the inaugural Ivy Plus Championships.
"We got to compete against a lot of tough competition that we normally don't encounter in our regular season," Katherine Yau '16 said. "It was a good chance for us to see right away how we compete in hard matches."
The fall season consists mainly of individual tournaments that let athletes get back into the groove of competition and prepare for the spring Ivy League season, which is only team competition.
Both teams showcased lineups that represented a departure from last year after disappointing Ivy seasons. Several new Big Green players had their first chance to compete for the school, notably Dovydas Sakinis '16, who was forced to sit out his first year at Dartmouth.
The women's team, led by captain Melissa Matsuoka '14, lost four starters from last year and will miss Akiko Okuda '15, who is off this term, but the sophomore and freshmen classes are strong.
The weekend showed a strong learning curve for the women. Each member of the Big Green played in one singles and two doubles matches on Friday, and came away with at least one win.
Taylor Ng '17 and Jacqueline Crawford '17 got the weekend off to a strong start, advancing in their singles flights with competitive wins over strong opponents.
The women faced their first adversity of the year with poorer results on Saturday, as all players were knocked down into the consolation bracket of their singles flights, with the exception of Ng, who easily handled Harvard University sophomore Amy He 6-1, 6-1 to advance to the finals of her draw.
"In the first competition of the year, everyone's trying to readjust to competition which we hadn't seen all summer," Sarah Bessen '16 said. "After disappointing results on Saturday, coach told us to treat our Sunday matches like we were all in the finals of our flights and that really got us excited to play."
On Sunday, the team showed resolve, taking seven out of their eight singles matches, dropping only a tight third set loss. Ng continued her hot start to the season, winning her flight with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over sophomore Xue Zhang from Wake Forest University.
"This was such a good experience for me because it was such a change from high school, where everything feels so individual and there's no sense of a team identity," Ng said. "This weekend was the best experience with tennis I've ever had because the team really came together and supported each other."
In their first action of the season, the Big Green men played in a loaded field at the Ivy Plus Invitational. Ten of the 12 players saw action on the first day with generally positive results all around.
"The team is sort of just looking to build on this early season tournament," George Wall '17 said. "Everyone got a lot of matches in, which was the goal, so it was a very useful tournament for us to get an idea of where we are."
Competing in the top draw, Chris Kipouras '15 and Sakinis dropped their first matches, but bounced back to win their consolations. Wall and Sam Todd '15 stole the show, taking both of their singles matches to advance to the semifinals of their draws.
Saturday showed similarly encouraging results, as Todd and Wall continued their runs to advance to the finals. Todd took his match in straight sets, while Wall fought back from a deficit and took his match in three sets.
Todd and Wall were able to top off their strong start to the season with two three set wins on Sunday to win their draws.
"Everyone competed well throughout the weekend, so I think coach was happy about how we executed in the matches we played," Wall said.
