Yale Athletics

This weekend, both squads of Yale tennis fought at the ITA Super Regionals. 

Members of the Yale women’s tennis team competed in the ITA Super Regionals at home while two members played at the Brown Invitational. Meanwhile, members of the Yale men’s tennis team traveled to Ancient Eight rivals Harvard to play the ITA Super Regionals while others competed at the Dartmouth Invitational. 

On the women’s side, Chelsea Kung ’23, Rhea Shrivastava ’23, Vivian Cheng ’23, Ann Wright Guerry ’26 and Sophia Zaslow ’26 competed in singles at Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center in the ITA Super Regionals. Kung, captain of the women’s squad, competed with Cheng and Guerry with Zaslow in the doubles draw.

“I hope that the same energy and support [as last weekend] is felt by everyone on this team,” said Kung. “It’s our last event of the fall, and I would love to go out with a bang and end on a high note, which I know our team is more than capable of, especially with how much work our team has put in this season.”

Competing in singles, Kung was originally seeded second, behind only Princeton’s Daria Frayman. In April, Kung defeated formerly ranked No. 1 Frayman. At Super Regionals, Kung defeated St. John’s Mouna Bouzgarrou (6–1, 6–2) in the first round and proceeded to topple Syracuse’s Shiori Ito (6–1, 6–3) in the round of 16. Kung made it to the quarterfinals in singles, where she ultimately fell to Cornell’s Lan Mi (6–3, 6–3).

First-year Guerry beat Columbia’s Sophia Wang (6–3, 6–1) in the first round of Super Regionals, losing in the round of 16.

Guerry shared that the team will “[continue] to focus on [their] intensity and making fewer unforced errors” in practice for the regular season. Fellow rookie Zaslow plans to work most on her mental game and serve ahead of the Dartmouth Invitational and spring season.

“My personal highlight of the invitational was beating a first-year from Columbia that I had lost to before in junior tennis,” Zaslow said. 

Although Zaslow and Shrivastava lost their first matches, they both won in the back draw. Kung and Cheng fought until the quarterfinals, where they lost a super tiebreaker to Syracuse’s Miyuka Kimoto and Polina Kozyreva.

The ITA Super Regionals took place on Yale’s outdoor tennis courts, beginning with the singles rounds of 32 and 16 on Friday and doubles on Saturday and concluding with finals in doubles and singles on Monday. Singles finalists and the doubles champions earned spots at the ITA Fall National Championships, which will take place in San Diego the first weekend of November.

On the men’s side, Michael Sun ’23, Theo Dean ’24, Aidan Reilly ’25 and Walker Oberg ’25 traveled to Cambridge for the ITA Super Regionals. Drake noted Sun’s win over Harvard’s Daniel Milavsky in the opening round of the ITA Super Regionals as a “a good win over a talented player.”

Sun racked up singles victories until the round of 16, where he fell to Dartmouth’s Hikaru Takeda 6–3 in the third set. Competing in doubles, Sun and his partner Dean made it to the quarterfinals, where they lost to Penn’s Kevin Zhu and Edoardo Graziani.

“[Sun] implemented several of the things that he has been working on and fought hard in all of his matches even though his level was not as high as he would have liked the entire time,” men’s captain Dean wrote to the News. “This past weekend was tough results-wise for the team, so the biggest challenge/thing that we are going to work on this week will be to move past the disappointment from this past weekend quickly, still put in a good week of training during the week and be mentally ready to compete again this weekend.”

Super Regionals began on Friday with the round of 16 doubles matches and round of 32 singles matches. On Saturday, the quarterfinals and consolation bracket took place for doubles while singles players competed in the round of 16 and consolation bracket. Doubles closed out the weekend on Sunday with semifinals while singles played quarterfinals and consolation. Both the singles semifinals and finals and doubles finals took place on Monday. 

Winners of the Super Regionals will proceed to compete at the ITA Fall Championships in San Diego, California at the start of November..

Reilly’s highlight was competing against Harvard’s Henry von der Schulenburg, who was ranked No. 17 pre-season. However, he looks forward to this weekend’s CT Invite at the Cullman-Heyman Tennis Center. 

“I’m super excited to compete back on the Yale courts once again,” Reilly said. “It’s been several months since this has happened, and I’m excited to employ the things I worked on throughout the summer at home.”

Having finished ITA competition for the fall, the men’s team will take advantage of November and December as crucial training months ahead of their spring season.

Both teams also participated in invitationals this weekend.

Jamie Kim ’25 and Rebecca Lynn ’26 traveled to Providence for competition this weekend, where Kim posted a notable 7–5, 6–3 win over Brown’s Gabriella Dellacano.

“Shoutout to Jamie for a really big win at Brown Invitational,” women’s head coach Rachel Kahan wrote. “They have a very strong team and she came back from a big deficit in the first set to win the match.”

The Dartmouth Invitational, the women’s last competition of the fall, will last Nov. 4 through Nov. 6 will be the first time the team will travel together this academic year.

Renaud Lefevre ’24 and Eric Li ’26 traveled to Hanover to compete in the Dartmouth Invitational as singles players. There, Lefevre boasted a pair of wins, leaving victorious against Middlebury’s Zihao Yuan (6–2, 2–6, 6–4) and Dartmouth’s Alex Knox Jones (6–4, 3–6, 7–5).

“Renaud was down 5–2 in the third set before coming back to win 7–5. We love to see that type of resiliency,” Men’s head coach Chris Drake said.

The CT Invite this weekend will be the first opportunity for returning players to compete at home since a conference match against Dartmouth in April. This weekend will also be the first time that the team’s two first-years, Li and Vignesh Gogineni ’26, will compete at home.

“We continue to search for perfection in areas we can control: preparation, mental approach and clarity with our game styles,” Drake wrote to the News. “We will also focus a lot on our strength and conditioning throughout November and make it a priority for the guys over winter break.”

The CT Invite will begin on Friday.