Women's Tennis Ivy Title Hopes Remain Alive

At 2-2 in the Ivy League, the Harvard women’s tennis team came into the weekend two games behind the league-leading Yale Bulldogs (then 4-0 in the Ivy League). After having its match against Brown postponed to Thursday, the Crimson (11-6, 3-2 Ivy League) came out on Sunday and moved within a game and a half of the league leaders (16-3, 5-1) with a 5-2 victory. With the win, Harvard snapped a two-game losing streak against the Bulldogs.

The Crimson won four of six singles matches after winning the doubles point with revamped lineups at the first and second lines. While the team’s two senior co-captains fell in singles action, two underclassmen—freshmen Amy He and Hai-Li Kong—pulled out three-set wins to clinch the victory for Harvard.

“This was a big win for the team,” Harvard coach Traci Green said. “We have been working very hard in practice and we prepared well. We take our hat off to Yale and they are an excellent team, but we played better today.”

Green said that the team, which scrawled “Boston Strong” on each of their arms before the match began and made stickers for their jerseys to pay tribute to those affected by the Boston marathon bombings, played with a fire against their rivals.

“One of the keys in today’s match was our hearts,” Green said. “We played with a lot of heart today. We came out in the doubles on fire and in singles we believed all the way through.”

“Today it felt like we were playing for something bigger than Harvard,” freshman Amanda Lin added. “The Harvard-Yale match is always an important match for the team and we all really want to win because of the rivalry, but this year was extra special.”

The Crimson started by splitting up co-captains Hideko Tachibana and Kristin Norton, who were 7-3 on the season as a team, in doubles. Tachibana played with freshman Lin and defeated the Bulldogs’ top line of Elizabeth Epstein and Hanna Yu in a tiebreak, 9-8 (9-7). Norton partnered with sophomore Sylvia Li, who usually plays with Lin, in taking the second line, 8-6, to clinch the doubles point for Harvard despite an 8-6 loss by Kong and junior Hannah Morrill at line three.

“We consider our lineup to be very fluid,” Green said. “At any given time, our team knows that any of us can step forward and do well.”

In singles, Lin surrendered just one game in making quick work of Yale opponent Courtney Amos, 6-1, 6-0. It was Lin’s 13th win in a row for the Crimson, running her overall record on the season to 24-3; five wins more than the next best Harvard player. Lin has not lost a single match at the fourth, fifth, or sixth line all year long.

“Amanda is a bundle of energy and an amazing player all the way around,” Green said. “It is a pleasure to work with her day in and day out. She brings a lot as a freshman to our team.”

Yale fought back quickly with straight-set wins over Tachibana and Norton to even the score at two-all. But Li fought off Amber Li in straight sets at line five after a double-break first set, 6-2, turned into a more competitive second set, 7-5. With the Crimson on the edge of victory, the team turned to He, who fought back from deficits all day.

After dropping the first set, 6-4, He battled back to take the second set with a pair of breaks, 6-1. For the second time in the Ivy League season the match came down to a final-set tiebreak, as He and Bulldog Madeleine Hamilton battled to a draw in the first 12 games of the second set. In the tiebreak, He saved two match points before taking an 8-7 advantage and forcing a Hamilton error that gave Harvard the victory.

Lin said that the win, which was the Crimson’s first against a top 35 opponent this year, was crucial. According to the freshman, while the team had come close only to fall just short earlier this year, it retained confidence in its abilities and was rewarded on Sunday.

“We have always believed that we were right up there with those top ranked teams but we have always fallen just short of beating them,” Lin said. “Today was a big step in proving to ourselves that we can really do it.”

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