The Big Green women finished the weekend with a record of 17-6 in singles and 6-6 in doubles. Katherine Yau '16, Taylor Ng '17 and Jacqueline Crawford '17 went undefeated in singles, and Ng tallied a double bagel along the way, defeating University of Pennsylvania freshman Luba Vazhenina 6-0, 6-0.
The Ivy Challenge is conducted in a hidden dual format, similar to the team matches that the women play in the spring, because the Big Green players start their matches together on adjacent courts. This is a departure from the mostly bracket-based fall tournaments.
"In normal fall tournaments, your teammates are so spread out, so having your teammates side by side really gives you an opportunity to build off of each other's successes," Sarah Bessen '16 said. "There's much more of a team identity, and it's really just a more fun environment to play in."
The women got off to a strong start on Friday, going 5-3 in singles against players from the Pennsylvania State University and Penn and 4-0 in doubles against duos from the University of Iowa and Brown University. The 3-0 doubles sweep of Iowa on Friday began the Big Green's weekend-long battle for revenge against a Hawkeyes team that trounced the Dartmouth women on their spring break trip last year.
"We really struggled in doubles last year, so it was awesome to start the weekend by winning every one of our doubles matches," Yau said.
The Big Green continued its form on Saturday, tallying singles wins over the top 5 players from Iowa to compete a clean 8-0 sweep of the Hawkeyes during the weekend. Suzy Tan '16 and Narni Summerall '17 added wins against players from Virginia Tech and Boston College respectively to post a Saturday singles tally of 7-0 for Dartmouth.
"When we played Iowa last year, they beat us pretty badly, but they couldn't even get one match off of us this weekend," Yau said. "I think it shows how hard we've worked and how far we've come as a team."
Despite posting strong results, the women expressed a desire to continue improving moving forward.
"I struggled with closing out second sets in matches that I dominated the first sets in," Yau said. "[Head coach] Bob [Dallis] commented on how we really need to be prepared for our opponents to give us different looks in second sets and on how we need to keep forcing our opponents to figure out ways to beat us."
The men's tennis team made the most of its weekend, sending eight players to the Brown Invitational and three to the Columbia Classic to ensure that everyone saw playing time. The men won 12 singles matches and seven doubles matches against various opponents in a dominant opening.
In the Big Green's first round of matches, the team won six of eight singles and three of four doubles against Georgetown University. Later that day, the Big Green won another six singles and four doubles against Middlebury College.
Cameron Ghorbani '14, Diego Pedraza '17, Chris Kipouras '15, George Wall '17 and Sam Todd '15 were all perfect on the first day.
The men were dominant in doubles, an important component in team matches as it gives an advantage heading into singles.
"George's backhand passing shots against Middlebury were so good they basically cured cancer," Justin Chan '16 said.
Dovydas Sakinis '16, Brandon DeBot '14 and Blake Niehaus '17 represented Dartmouth equally well at the Columbia Classic with solid singles and doubles play from Sakinis and DeBot.
Niehaus showed resolve and determination to come back from match point down to win the match.
"Niehaus was down in a 10 point tiebreaker 9-8," Chan said. "He saved the match point and came to net on his match point at 10-9. His opponent hit an angle that he couldn't get to simply by reaching for it, so he dove and hit a half volley winner to take the match."
Both teams return to action the weekend of Oct. 18 for regionals. The women travel to Cambridge, Mass., while the men go on the road to New Haven, Conn.
