A pair of losses drops the women’s season record to 3-8. With COVID-19 outbreaks, unideal weather events and injuries over the past few weeks, the team resolved their three plagues just in time for Passover. Even with a full and healthy team, however, the Judges faltered: first losing a tight match against New York University (NYU) and later in the week falling handily to Tufts.
Eventually losing 4-5 in the final head-to-head score, the teams had four points apiece as the last match went the distance. Brandeis continued to show dominance in the doubles and the first years furthered their impressive showings. Sabrina Loui ’25 and Bhakti Parwani ’25 playing at first and Cecilia Denis ’25 and Anastasia Sia ’25 playing at third won 8-3 and 8-2, respectively. The first doubles team expanded their winning record to 7-3 for the season so far. After the doubles, Brandeis led 2-1.
In singles, NYU dominated the first half. First and second singles were completed in straight sets with NYU losing no more than three games in any set. In third singles, Ana Hatfield ’22 came out strong against her opponent bageling her in the first set. After losing the second set 3-6, she fell in the deciding set 4-6. With NYU only needing one more match to Brandeis’ three, the final singles matches gave NYU three opportunities to win.
Sia and Olivia Howe ’22 responded to this pressure productively. In fourth singles Sia added a score in the win column of her already impressive singles record this season bringing it to 8-3. Howe dropped only two games in her win at sixth singles.
The match was tied 4-4 overall. It all came down to fifth singles. Denis started off strong winning the first set 6-2. Each player held five service games in the second set bringing the score to 5-5. The lengthy 7-5 set went to NYU as Denis lost her serve. In the final set, which decided the individual match and the entire head-to-head, Denis held on for a while before losing 3-6.
Brandeis couldn’t get enough of NYU on Sunday as the men’s team traveled to their away match. Though their ranking fell six points to 15, the team showed their strength as they dominated the head-to-head. They won 9-0 with the biggest challenge coming at third singles. Dylan Walters ’24 eked out his first set in a tiebreaker before crushing his opponent 6-1 in the second. This was the one real outlier as Jeff Chen ’22 at second singles, Colt Tegtmeier ’22 at fourth and Simon Kauppila ’23 at fifth all won 6-2, 6-3 and Adam Tzeng ’22 at first and Aaron Basye ’24 at sixth won with a bagel and a breadstick.
Two days later, the women’s team was back on the court. This time in Somerville. Playing the tenth seeded Tufts team, Brandeis lost decisively. Tufts swept the board 9-0. Though they put up more of a fight in first doubles and second singles, Brandeis saw the losing side of many 6-0, 6-1 and 6-2 sets. Loui played in both close matches. She almost pulled off a win with Parwani at first doubles but ultimately lost 6-8. In second singles, Loui put up a fight before eventually falling 3-6, 5-7.
The Judges are back in action this week as the women have their final two home matches of the season against Skidmore on April 9 and Franklin Pierce on April 10. The men take on Babson in an away match on April 10.
