Women's Tennis Wins Final Non-Conference Matchup

In an effort to get more on the court, the Harvard women’s tennis team (8-4) has given up a few things off of it.

“We have a little tradition where we have team Lent,” freshman Hai-Li Kong said. “Someone might give up grease, someone might give up YouTube. It’s a collaborative effort to help us focus.”

Kong and her teammates have had a lot of success since making the pledge, defeating Syracuse (9-7), 6-1, on Saturday, for their seventh win in eight matches. Since losing contests to Boston College, Kansas State, and William and Mary, the team has only fallen once in March. The Crimson has won five straight at home and heads into conference play healthy for the first time all season.

“We definitely played amazing [this weekend],” Kong said. “This was one of our best matches this year. We had so much energy against Syracuse, a very energetic team of really tough fighters. It was great to have a team that can really push us with our energy.”

In another effort to keep the team focused, the players have listed individual and team goals on posters that it looks at every day before and after practice. The posters hang in the players’ lockers and serve as a reminder of what the team has been working for. Coach Traci Green credited this game-by-game focus and recent health as reasons for the recent success.

“The team has been taking it one match at a time,” Green said. “They’ve been getting healthier as a team and it’s the first time in a long time we have had the whole squad healthy and ready to go.”

The match was the final nonconference tilt of the season for the team, which boasts a 50-21 record in dual matches this season. The team has been dominant in recent weeks, blanking NJIT and Binghampton back-to-back for the first consecutive shutouts the team has had since 2010.

Saturday’s defeat of Syracuse reversed the outcome from a year ago, where the Orange won 4-3. The Crimson took five of the six singles matches Saturday after winning two of the three doubles contests to take the additional doubles points. In line three doubles, Kong and junior Hannah Morrill outfought their Orange opponents to record an 8-5 victory. In the line one matchup, co-captains Hideko Tachibana and Kristin Norton ran their doubles record to 6-0 on the year with an 8-3 victory over Maddie Kobelt and Brittany Lashway.

“Hideko and Kristin are really the heart and soul of our team,” Green said. “They are our two seniors and captains and we go where they go. Right now they are fired up and they have been having solid practices and as a team we are looking to build off the win and continue that momentum against Columbia.”

In singles, Tachibana struggled through a straight-set loss to her line one opponent. But the Crimson won 10 of the remaining 12 sets that were contested. Freshman Amanda Lin bounced back after losing the first set, 4-6, to take the next two sets, 6-2, 6-4.

Sophomore Sylvia Li similarly rebounded from an early deficit, losing the first set 3-6 and then denying her opponent the victory by winning two straight games at 5-all in the second set and taking the third set tiebreaker, 10-4.

Norton never struggled in her line three match, getting on her opponent from the beginning of the match in a 6-0, 6-0, victory. In lines two and four, freshmen He and Kong, respectively, took care of their opponents in straight sets to seal the victory for the Crimson.

Kong said that there has been a long adjustment period to the college game for the four freshmen on the team—Kong, Lin, He, and Crystal Yen.

The four have taken on large roles on the team in their first year, however. He played line two on the team on Saturday, even with Norton being healthy. Lin and He lead the team with eight wins each, while Kong has played most of the year in the top six. Yen stepped in for the team at line six as it struggled with a slew of injuries earlier in the semester.

“I think just having first semester under our belts really helped bring us together [as freshmen] second semester,” Kong said. “Traveling together over spring break has really helped us bond. I think since we came back from break we have all played really well and this boosted our confidence.”

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at davidfreed@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter at @DPFreed.