W. Tennis Rallies After Slow Start

After a shaky start to the season, the Harvard women's tennis team roared back, winning six of its last eight matches en route to a 12-9 overall record and a 5-2 mark in the Ivy League. The women's squad ended the year with a smash, defeating Brown 5-2 and sweeping Dartmouth 7-0 to place third in the conference.

Coming into the spring, Harvard had pretty much the same team on paper as one year ago. Freshman Lola Ajilore was the only new face to the varsity line-up. Nevertheless, as the season progressed, Coach Gordon Graham found himself shuffling his players in and out of his roster due to a slew of injuries to top players. Both senior co-captain Sanaz Ghazal and sophomore No. 1 Sanja Bajin spent a portion of the season on the sidelines nursing nagging injuries. Harvard showed a great deal of flexibility and resiliency to end the year on a high note, three matches above .500.

"This season was a definite success," Graham said. "To finish off the season by blanking Dartmouth was such a satisfying ending. It was a total team effort and really tied together the year."

Harvard won all six singles matches in straight sets against the Big Green, topped by Ghazal's 6-4, 6-3 victory at third singles. Ghazal, who has played varsity tennis throughout her four years at Harvard, finished her match last, seizing all the attention and support from teammates and a large home crowd. Though the senior struggled early in the year in singles action, Ghazal emerged as a top doubles player, teaming with sophomore Sanja Bajin to form a formidable number one doubles pair.

"My inconsistent health has made this year difficult, but all in all, I'm really happy about what I've accomplished here," Ghazal said. "It's been a great four years and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world."

Ghazal's double's partner Bajin took this year as an opportunity to assert herself among the top singles players in the Northeast. After an early loss to Columbia's Suzanne Wright in Harvard's first Ivy League match of the season, Bajin lost only one more set all year (against Penn). She anchored the team from the number one singles' spot all season and will return in 2002 looking for her third straight selection to the Ivy League first team.

"Sanja is a great competitor and a talented player. Plus, she's only a sophomore," Graham said. "She is such an asset to the team."

Bajin's most impressive win of the season may have occurred at Texas Christian University when the Crimson defeated Mississippi State. An inspired Harvard squad surprised the Bulldogs, who were ranked 25 spots above Harvard at the match's onset and finished the year No. 32 in the nation. Junior Lara Naqushbandi took the first point, winning 6-3, 6-4 at fourth singles. Ajilore quickly followed, also defeating her opponent 6-3, 6-4. Ghazal gave Harvard a 3-0 edge in the match with a straight set, 7-5, 7-5 victory over Claudia Oliveira, setting up Bajin to capture the winning point. After losing the first set to huge-serving Amelie Detriviere, 4-6, Bajin recovered to take the second set 6-2. In the third, Bajin pulled off her best Andre Agassi imitation, befuddling Detriviere with great service returns and strong groundstroke play to take the victory and clinch the match for Harvard, winning 6-3 in the final set.

As a team, Harvard's best match of the year arguably came against another non-league opponent, defeating perennial powerhouse Virginia at the Murr Center. Junior Sarah McGinty and Naqushbandi earned Harvard the first point of the match, recovering to win 9-7 at third doubles to give the Crimson the doubles point. Ghazal and Bajin easily won their match at first doubles, 8-3, but McGinty and Naqushbandi knew their match would decide which team earned the precious doubles point after juniors Andrea Magyera and Fleur Broughton could not hold on at second doubles, dropping their match 8-4.

To compound Graham's worries, after squeaking by with a win in the doubles, Harvard lost its first two singles matches and trailed in three others after a set. It appeared as though Harvard would only win Bajin's point at first singles (who cruised to a 6-2, 6-0 victory to knot the match at 2-2) after an hour into singles action.

The team came together, however, executing one comeback after another to defeat No. 55 UVA in dramatic fashion. Broughton avenged her loss at second doubles earlier in the day, defeating Laura James 2-6, 7-5, 6-3 in third singles. Ajilore was next to finish. Despite dropping the first set 0-6, the freshman gained her wits and smoked Kelly Weaver in sets two and three, overpowering Weaver with punishing forehands from the baseline. Ajilore won 0-6, 6-2, 6-3 to clinch the victory in the team match for Harvard. Though the outcome of the overall match was already decided, Jennie Timoney dusted off Christine Kim after losing her first set 3-6 to finish the day. Fueled by her teammates inspiring efforts, Timoney gave the squad a 5-2 overall team win, earning glory at No. 6 singles with a 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 triumph.

"UVA is a great team, and they had beaten us in the fall," Graham said. "Our team was determined and came through in the clutch for a big win."

Harvard will only get better next season. The Crimson returns five seniors. Broughton and Magyera will serve as next season's co-captains, while Naqushbandi, McGinty, and Timoney will all play in the everyday lineup.

But they will be pushed by an intriguing incoming freshman class. Courtney Bergman is the top-ranked American female tennis player heading to college this autumn. Highly recruited by superpower Stanford, Bergman chose to stay on the east coast, bolstering Harvard's lineup for next season. She will be joined by Susanna Lingman, ranked in the top 35 nationally and sought after by UCLA, Ashley Hyotte from Sudbury, Massachusetts, and Helis Zulijani from Croatia, who was once ranked No. 2 in the country's 16-and-under age group.

"We'll have lots of new talent. Combine them with our five seniors and you've got a nice mix of youth and experience," Graham said. "It's going to be fun to see what they can do."