Women's Tennis
Women’s tennis wins Midwest Invitational
Washington University’s No. 11 women’s tennis team defeated No. 14 DePauw University, No. 15 University of Chicago and No. 30 Denison College over two days to win the Madison Invitational Championship on Saturday as junior Jamie Silverberg won five of her six matches to exceed 100 career wins.
The Bears, who lost to Chicago 6-3 at last month’s Intercollegiate Tennis Association indoor tournament, swept their doubles matches in the Madison Invite semifinals en route to flipping last month’s score and defeating the Maroons 6-3 overall.
During the match Silverberg, who is currently ranked 11th in the Central Region, upset No. 5 Megan Tang at second singles. With the win, Silverberg became the 22nd member of the women’s tennis team to join the 100-win club. Silverberg would add two more wins against DePauw to bring her career total up to 102.
“It was really exciting to win [100] and I’ve seen other seniors do it,” Silverberg said. “For me, it was a little bit of a different feeling since I’m a junior, but to get a win off of an opponent that I’ve never beaten, that was really awesome. It’s great to know that I’ve been able to contribute a lot to the team. “
In the finals, the Bears continued their trend of strong doubles play, winning two of three doubles matches against DePauw. Wash. U. then coasted to a trio of straight-set singles victories to cap off the victory.
The 5-1 championship win over DePauw brought the Bears’ record against nationally ranked opponents to 6-4 (12-4 overall).
Silverberg and sophomore Rebecca Ho won two of their three doubles matches this weekend as well as three singles matches each.
In the opening match of the tournament, the Red and Green found themselves down early against Denison thanks to a pair of losses at first- and second-flight doubles. The Bears quickly recovered, however, sweeping all six singles matches in straight sets for a 7-2 win.
The Bears went 6-3 in doubles this weekend, a comforting sight for a team still solidifying its rotation.
“Overall, we know that our singles has been strong all season from one through six,” junior Aly Coran said. “We’ve been working pretty hard on doubles and we knew that doing well would be less stress on the team. People took that to heart and we definitely saw that throughout Saturday.”
Other highlights from the weekend included freshman Grace Deering running her singles winning streak to nine matches, and Coran and sophomore Kaylan Griffith winning all three of their doubles matches to improve to 6-0 on the season.
The Red and Green will face the University of Chicago again at home on Saturday in the Dwight David Tennis Center as part of a three-game set also featuring No. 39 University of Texas-Tyler and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
With reporting by Derek Shyr.