Women's Tennis Stopped by Stanford

The No. 18 Harvard women’s tennis team has been on a roll to start the spring season and, based on the success of last weekend’s performance, expects to continue that trend in the coming weeks.

For the first time in program history, Harvard advanced to the semifinals of the ITA National Indoor Championships, held in Madison, Wisconsin. The tournament, which featured 16 of the nation’s top teams, was a thriller for Harvard, which upset No. 6 Georgia and No. 16 Texas Christian University by 4-3 scores to reach the Final Four.

Though top-ranked Stanford ended Harvard’s unprecedented run with a 5-0 win, the squad returned home with a positive outlook.

“Now that we have two great matches under our belt it’s definitely a boost for the entire season,” senior Eva Wang said. “We have so much more confidence for the rest of our matches.”

STANFORD 5, HARVARD 0

Ranked No. 1 in the nation, Stanford was the favorite going into the match and showed why, as the Cardinal defeated the Crimson 5-0 and then beat Texas 4-0 in the final to become the tournament’s three-time champion.

“Obviously we knew that they were No. 1 and we were the underdogs,” freshman Beier Ko said, “but I thought we gave them a pretty good fight.”

Junior Elsa O’Riain and senior Melissa Anderson lost for just the third time this year against the Cardinal’s Alice Barnes and Anne Yelsey by an 8-5 margin. In No. 2 doubles, Wang and sophomore Stephanie Schnitter went from being down 7-2 to narrowing the gap to 7-5 before falling 8-5 to Amber Liu and Celia Durkin, who had played for Harvard as a freshman. In the No. 3 position, juniors Preethi Mukundan and Cindy Chu fell 8-2 to the Cardinal’s Whitney Deason and Theresa Logar.

Stanford won four straight singles contests in the No. 2, 3, 4 and 6 spots to advance to the final round. Mukundan at No. 5 singles led the Cardinal’s Deason 6-2, 2-4, and Wang at No. 1 was behind Liu by a 6-1, 5-0 margin when the match was decided.

HARVARD 4, TCU 3

In a fashion similar to that of Thursday’s match, the Crimson’s victory against TCU in the quarterfinals on Friday was determined by a final singles match. The Horned Frogs took the doubles point with 8-5 and 8-4 wins at No. 2 and No. 3. O’Riain and Anderson beat TCU’s Helena Besovic and Anna Sydorska by a score of 8-6 in the No. 1 position.

Mukundan at No. 5 got Harvard off to a solid start in singles by beating Kewa Nichols by a score of 6-2, 6-4. Wang and Ko fought hard against No. 22 Besovic and No. 43 Ana Cetnik in the No. 1 and No. 3 spots but fell, 6-0, 4-6, 6-3 and 7-5, 6-2.

O’Riain at No. 2 and Anderson at No. 4 helped the Crimson back into the match with back-to-back wins. O’Riain faced No. 30 Sydorska and pulled off a 6-1, 0-6, 6-3 victory. Anderson, meanwhile, beat the Horned Frogs’ Karine Ionesco by a score of 6-4, 6-0.

Schnitter asserted her dominance on the court by shutting out her opponent 6-0 in the first set and finished the match with a 6-3 second-set win to lead Harvard to its first-ever semifinal at the tournament.

HARVARD 4, GEORGIA 3

The Crimson’s first match was a nail-biter against Georgia on Thursday, as the score was tied 3-3 before Harvard clinched the victory in the last match of singles play.

“We didn’t really have a lot of confidence-boosting going into the first match—we just did our normal routine,” Wang said. “It came down to [Mukundan’s] match. She played amazingly and we pulled out the win.”

Though Harvard’s top doubles pair of O’Riain and Anderson avenged a defeat in the fall with an 8-2 win against the Bulldogs’ Shadisha Robinson and Caroline Basu, the Crimson was unable to claim the doubles point as Georgia’s No. 2 and No. 3 pairs held off Harvard’s teams to win 8-3 and 8-4, respectively.

The Crimson needed to win four out of six singles matches to advance to the next round and Anderson got the team on the board with a 6-3, 6-1 win against Darya Ivanov in the No. 4 slot. No. 2 O’Riain battled the Bulldogs’ Robinson but fell, 7-5, 6-4.

Schnitter and Ko brought the team total to three with victories in the No. 6 and No. 3 positions, but Wang’s loss at No. 1 set the stage for a tie-breaking match between No. 5 contenders Mukundan and Georgia’s Evgenia Subbotina. Mukundan triumphed in the first set, 6-4, but was down 0-2 in the third set before coming around to prevail, 6-4.

With a 3-1 record, Harvard returns to the Murr Center on February 11 and 12 to face No. 30 South Alabama and No. 38 Sacramento State. Freshman Laura Peterzan, who missed the tournament due to injury, will be back in the lineup.

—Staff writer Barbara R. Barreno can be reached at barreno@fas.harvard.edu.