The men’s tennis team took two home matches last weekend while the women’s team captured fifth at the ECAC Division I Women’s Indoor Tennis Championship.
The men’s team extended its unbeaten streak at home to six, defeating Buffalo 6-1 and sweeping Boston University 7-0.
In the first match versus Buffalo, the Big Green won the doubles point before winning five of six singles matches including a pair of three-set victories from Brendan Tannenbaum ’16 and Diego Pedraza ’17.
“Our mindset from the beginning was to take them out on our home courts and dictate the pace,” Brandon DeBot ’14 said.
Against BU, Dartmouth cruised to a relatively easy victory, losing only one game in the three doubles matches and taking all six singles matches in straight sets.
“The afternoon crowd against BU was very vocal, and I think we really benefited from their rowdy support,” George Wall ’17 said. “It’s great to see them get a little bit rowdy, maybe even get in the heads of our opponents a little bit and of course cheer us on.”
Wall was dominant for the Big Green at the number one position, winning his match against BU 6-1, 6-0.
The freshman “destroyed the opposition,” Cameron Ghorbani ‘14 said.
“I think everyone on the team was really proud to see just how far he’s come,” Ghorbani said.
The men’s team is in the middle of an extended homestand that started on Jan. 31 against East Tennessee State and runs until Feb. 28 when the team travels to take on Ball State.
“We lucked out with our schedule,” DeBot said. “We played a lot of road matches last year, and now those teams are coming back to play us. It’s great playing at home, we know the courts and we get a lot of support from our friends and fans.”
The women’s team headed to New York to compete against five other Ivy League opponents in the ECAC Indoor Championship. Originally ranked sixth out of six teams, the Big Green dropped its first match against third-seeded Princeton University but rebounded to defeat fourth-seeded Cornell University in the fifth-place match.
In its first match against Princeton, the team started strong and won the doubles point with victories from the teams of Akiko Okuda ’15 and Melissa Matsuoka ’14, and Julienne Keong Si Ying ’16 and Suzy Tan ’16.
However, the Big Green ran into trouble in the singles matches, dropping the overall match 4-2, with only Tan winning her match 6-1, 6-3.
“In singles, Princeton recognized that they were down 1-0 and they were a little bit more consistent than we were,” women’s head coach Bob Dallis said.
The team bounced back on Saturday, upsetting the Big Red 5-2 to take fifth place.
The Big Green started by dropping the doubles point before taking five of the six singles matches. Taylor Ng ’17 and Okuda wrapped up their matches in straight sets, both winning 6-1, 6-4, while Katherine Yau ’16, Matsuoka and Tan had to go into the super-tiebreaker to decide their matches.
“Going into the match, we talked about being more consistent,” Dallis said. “We do a fair amount of mental-skills work.”
The men will host the ECAC tournament in Hanover next weekend while the women hit the road to take on the University of Louisville and the University of Wisconsin.
