The Yale women’s tennis team got revenge and a championship Monday, winning the Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament by defeating Princeton.
Princeton beat the Elis 4-3 in a pivotal Ivy League match last April.
The No. 3-seeded Bulldogs advanced to the finals with 4-0 wins against Dartmouth, Boston University and Harvard over the weekend before defeating Princeton 5-2 Monday at the USTA National Tennis Center in Flushing, N.Y.
“Harvard didn’t have all of their top players, but we beat who they gave us,” Karlyn Martin ’04 said. “Against Dartmouth, we dominated the doubles.”
The Elis closed out the ECAC team tournament with a 5-2 victory over No. 2-seeded Princeton.
Susie Hiniker ’03 sealed the win with her 6-2, 6-5 performance against Princeton’s Alison Hashmall.
“The Princeton match was tight for a while,” Ashley Martin ’04 said. “It was 3-2, and Susie and Biffy [Kaufman] had tight matches at that point–but I knew they were going to win.”
Ashley’s sister, Karlyn, who was undefeated in both singles and doubles throughout the tournament, defeated Princeton’s Stephanie Berg 6-1, 6-2 for one of the four singles points.
Captain Biffy Kaufman ’03 also prevailed at the end of three sets, winning 6-3, 3-6, 6-5.
Stephanie White ’05 (6-3, 6-1) gave Yale its other singles point, and the Elis added a doubles point to finish the match. The Bulldogs took two of the three doubles matches as Karlyn Martin paired with Hiniker and Ashley Martin paired with Purcell for two wins.
“[This] was the only competition of the fall where it was a team effort,” head coach Chad Skorupka said. “We put in a lot of work on and off the court and I think it paid off. There’s a lot of good team chemistry. We want to carry that into the spring.”
But there is room for improvement.
“Our concentration level,” Skorupka said. “Meaning, when we get up in a set, or we’re playing well, we need to maintain that and finish that set we’re in, or that match we’re in. When we get up 40-5 we want to win that game.”
Poor weather made it hard to close out this tournament.
“They didn’t really have a good backup plan for rain, and it rained for a very long time,” Ashley Martin said. “But every team was in that situation, it wasn’t just us.”