W. Tennis Loses Third Straight

The Harvard women’s tennis team had staved off Wildcats before. But unfortunately for the Crimson, Northwestern and Kentucky proved to be entirely different animals.

The No. 11 Crimson (2-4) fell to the No. 7 Northwestern Wildcats (7-1) 5-2 in Evanston, Ill. on Sunday, nine days after beating then-No. 13 Kentucky at the USTA/ITA National Women’s Team Indoor Championships on Feb. 6.

Notably, since its 4-3 victory over the blue-hued Wildcats in the tournament’s consolation round, Harvard has been winless in each of its three contests thereafter.

The Crimson may take solace in the fact that three of its four losses have been handed down by top-10 teams—Georgia, North Carolina and now Northwestern—but the players themselves are far from satisfied.

“We definitely could have beaten [Northwestern],” sophomore Eva Wang said. “It was more of a matter of actually believing that we could. Something mental was holding us back.”

At one point in the singles competition, Harvard was actually winning four of its six matches but ultimately fell, losing by a margin of four matches to two. When the dust settled, only Wang and freshman Cindy Chu had picked up singles wins, just barely keeping the team breathing.

“We needed to take advantage of our lead and continue,” Wang said. “There was no question about what we could have done. We were definitely a comparable team.”

The team sorely missed the help of junior Alexis Martire, who sat out the competition due to a sprained ankle suffered against then-No. 24 Illinois on Feb. 14.

“We’ve had a lot of little issues that hurt us so far,” junior co-captain Courtney Bergman said. “Alexis’ sprained ankle; I was injured for awhile. We’ve had a lot of problems with people simply missing from the lineup. Considering that and the travel, it’s been a tough time.”

In doubles, the Wildcats swept the Crimson, with the nation’s top-ranked pair of Cristelle Grier and Jessica Rush overtaking the No. 50 Bergman-Susanna Lingman duo by a margin of 8-2.

“Honestly, we just didn’t play solid doubles at all,” Bergman said. “[Grier-Rush] was definitely a good team, but beatable—more than anything, we sat back and let Northwestern take control. To their credit they were very aggressive, and we couldn’t afford to start off really slowly against a team like that.”

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu.