Women's Tennis Winless Against William and Mary, Old Dominion

The No. 57 Harvard women’s tennis team (5-6) dropped both matches this weekend against William and Mary (8-4, 1-0 CAA) and Old Dominion (5-4).

After last weekend’s sweep of BU, Maryland, and Marist, the Crimson stumbled to two loses in two days down in Virginia: 5-2 against the Tribe, and 4-2 against the Blue.

OLD DOMINION 4, HARVARD 2

The Big Blue came into the match with Crimson in strong form, having won three of its last four. Positive momentum propelled them to a win this weekend against the Harvard team.

This weekend was the first time this season that the Crimson played as the true away team, with all its other contests up to Saturday, taking place in either Harvard’s Murr Tennis Center or in Hanover, N.H. for the ECAC championships.

But for some of Old Dominion’s players, playing away from home means a bit more. The team has just one American player, sophomore Olivia Large who hails from Virginia Beach, VA. The other eight players all hail from eastern and central Europe: two from Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Croatia and one from Slovakia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Against international opposition, the Crimson initially took charge in the doubles. After their loss on Saturday, sophomore Annika Ringblom and freshman Sabrina Xiong came out strong on Sunday morning and beat the Adriana Rajkovic, Natalya Malenko pair 6-4.

The initial success was short lived however. Harvard would drop the next two doubles matches, so again they would go into the singles set of matches down, 1-0.

The Crimson would claim just two points from a possible six in the singles competition. Junior June Lee and senior Amy He who won for the Harvard, both in straight sets and both with scores of 6-2.

WILLIAM AND MARY 5, HARVARD 2

The weekend kicked off with a Saturday afternoon contest at the McCormack-Nagelsen Tennis Center in Williamsburg, Va.. After a strong start to the season for 41st-ranked Maryland, the Tribe has cooled off in its last six matches, going 3-3 over that span. Harvard on the other hand, has had good times followed by bad ones, navigating winning streaks then losing ones. For the Crimson, this weekend represented the latter.

The match started with the doubles contest of sophomore Nikki Kallenberg and freshman Isabel Jasper losing convincingly to a strong Tribe pair of Julia Casselbery and Cecily Wuenscher 6-1.

The pair of Ringblom and Xiong fell in a close match to Marie Faure and Elizaveta Nemchinov, losing 4-6.

The Crimson was in the hole early. By dropping the doubles contest, the match score was 1-0. Only once this season had Harvard overcome a 1-0 hole to end in victory, and the team was unable to improve that statistic this weekend.

Lee, Harvard’s number one seed lost in straight sets Nemchinov 6-2, 6-0 . Freshman Erica Oosterhout and He also lost in straight sets. Tallying the two points for the Crimson were Ringblom and Xiong who defeated the Tribe’s Casselbury and Maria Groener in two sets apiece.

The Harvard players know that after this tough weekend, there are some important takeaways.

“Both matches were very close and in both matches there were definitely moments where it looked like we were going to win,” Lee said. “I think we needed to come out a little stronger and more aggressive in doubles in order to get the doubles point since we lost the doubles point both days.”

With Ivies coming up in April, improvement is key, but so is the team’s morale.

“It was a tough loss,” Ringblom said. “We have been working so hard and it is hard to watch us lose two close matches. Although we were not successful this weekend, we have had a lot of success this season and I know this will only push us harder as we prepare for Ivies in April.”

—Staff writer Max McEvoy can be reached at max.mcevoy@thecrimson.com.