While its season may be young, the Washington University women’s tennis team has already faced one of the toughest opponents on its schedule.

The No. 16 Bears dropped a challenging match to No. 4 University of Chicago 8-1 last Saturday in Belleville, Ill.

The Maroons boasted four of the region’s top players in singles in addition to the top two doubles teams. But according to senior captain Elise Sambol, their opponent’s ranking did not affect the Bears’ strategy for the match.

“Honestly I don’t know any of the opponents’ ranking…we just know as a team overall they were very tough, and they won’t take it easy on us,” Sambol said. “We know that if they make a mistake, it’s not going to happen very often, and we need to take advantage of it…we don’t think about [rankings] when we step on the court.”

The Maroons swept Saturday’s doubles. Sophomore Kate Klein and junior Natalie Tingir fell to Kendra Higgins and Chrissy Hu 8-1 in the number-one spot, the Maroons’ Carmen Vaca Guzman and Linden Li defeated freshmen Evelyn Qin and Betsy Edershile 8-4 in second doubles and Sambol and freshman Theresa Petraskova also lost 8-4 to Jennifer Kung and Aswini Krishnan at third doubles.

According to head coach Kelly Stahlhuth, however, the setback in doubles did not affect the team’s overall effort.

“The nice thing is, every single person fought every point. Being down 3-0 after doubles, it can be easy to say ‘it’s tough, they’re really strong’…so it’s nice to say we didn’t quit,” she said.

Stahlhuth added that she noticed the Bears could improve their performance with a more sustained effort in doubles matches, something she hopes to address as the team prepares for the long season, which will extend late into the spring.

“We have a few things we can work on, so I’ve started to figure that out [for] the next couple weeks of practice,” Stahlhuth said. “Doubles we played half of the match pretty strong, so now we’ve got to work on the other half, the ending.”

Sambol’s 6-3, 6-0 victory over Tiffany Nguyen at sixth singles marked the Bears’ only victory for the day.

“Overall I think this year we definitely have the talent to beat [Chicago], it just didn’t work out that way…I think if we would have won at least one of our doubles [matches], that could have changed the attitude into singles,” Sambol said. “Going into singles up 3-0 instead of down 0-3 takes some of the pressures off the singles players…it was tough to come out strong right away.”

Sambol noted she was encouraged by the team’s depth—the Bears acquired several new players through recent transfers to Wash. U.

“This year we’re really fortunate to have such a deep team…we have a lot of newbies on the team, and they’re really driven and motivated,” Sambol said. “That will really help us out in April because the season is so long that sometimes when it comes to UAA[s], we’re really exhausted.”

The Bears return to action Saturday in St. Charles, Mo. to face the University of Southern Indiana. The match against the Screaming Eagles is set to begin at 12:30 p.m.