Women’s Tennis Splits

The Mary Washington women’s tennis team split a pair of matches this past weekend, defeating Hood College 9-0 on Friday and then falling 1-8 to Carnegie-Mellon University on Saturday.

The Lady Eagles’ had no problem traveling to Maryland and defeating the host Blazers of Hood College. Of the six singles matches, UMW lost just six games. Eagles’ junior Courtney Goimarac (No. 1) and sophomore Katie Schafer (No. 2) each won 6-1, 6-0 against their respective opponents. UMW sophomore Michelle Meadows  (No. 3) and junior Danielle Velardi (No. 4), each won their match without dropping a game as both defeated their opponents 6-0, 6-0. Rachel Covington (No. 5) won her singles match 6-1, 6-2 and the Katharine Yudkin (No. 6) secured the UMW singles sweep with her 6-1, 6-0 victory.

The doubles competition wasn’t that much harder for UMW to coast through, as Goimarac/Schafer won 8-3, Lawlor/ Meadows hardly broke a sweat with an easy 8-0 victory, and the Velardi/freshman Cassie Bowman combo was victorious 8-4. With the blowout win over Hood, the Eagles improved to 9-6 on the season and remained perfect in CAC play, advancing their conference mark to 3-0. Meanwhile Hood continued their dreadful season, dropping their conference record to 0-3 and their overall mark to 1-9.

However, UMW had the tables turned on them the following day in their next match against Carnegie-Mellon University. In that match, the 16th ranked Eagles became the victim of a decisive home victory for the 10th ranked Tartans. CMU sophomore Laura Chen (No. 1) soundly beat Goimarac 6-1, 6-1. However, the No. 2 – No. 4 UMW players were each involved in hard fought battles that went three sets. Unfortunately for the Eagles, they  could only take one of those three matches, with junior Meg Lawlor claiming the only UMW point of the day.

In the doubles part of the day, the Eagles one and third double teams were each knocked off by an 8-1 score. The second UMW doubles team, Lawlor/ Meadows, put up a battle but came up short, eventually falling 7-9 to the Tartans combination of sophomore Courtney Chin and freshman Alex Tapak.

The loss to CMU dropped UMW to 9-7 overall, but fortunately none of their losses have come in conference play as their CAC mark is still spotless at 3-0. The Lady Eagles had a home conference match yesterday against Salisbury University, but the results finished too late to be included in this issue.

The next match for Head Coach Patrick Catullo’s team is a road bout today at 4:30 p.m. against CAC rival St. Mary’s College.