Indoors is now a week behind us, the NESCAC schools have awoken from their winter hibernation, and for many schools it is already spring break. Where did the time go? After a commendable 50th place finish in the men’s indoors DraftKings, I’m back with the high yield takeaways of women’s indoors. 5 out of 8 competing teams were from my region, which is obviously the best region, so while D3NE Women’s is the far more experienced D3 tennis blogger, I’ll be taking the shot at this one. Keep an eye out for a northeast regional recap from D3NEW at the end of the month!
Emory defended their title for the 2nd straight year and honestly no one was surprised. These were the final standings (seeds in parentheses):
- Emory (1)
- Pomona-Pitzer (2)
- Carnegie Mellon (4)
- Chicago (3)
- Sewanee (8)
- Washington and Lee (6)
- Wash U (5)
- Johns Hopkins (7)
One thing that disappointed me a little about this tournament was the lack of close matches. The closest match was Pomona’s 6-3 win over Chicago in the semifinals, where Pomona went down 1-2 after doubles and at one point the match was tied at 3-3. Emory topped CMU in the other semifinal by a score of 6-3, but the match was decided at 5-2. On the last day of the tournament, all 4 matches finished with a score of 5-0, including Emory’s win over Pomona in the finals. So, all in all a little bit anticlimactic, but in general some great tennis was played in Tennessee. There were certainly some over achievers and some underachievers this past weekend. I debated giving each of the teams grades on the weekends but probably would have ended up giving everyone A’s for effort since I’m not as harsh as some of the other bloggers. So, I’ve separated the teams into having “Positive”, “Neutral”, and “Not-As Positive” weekends.
Positive Weekend:
Emory: Duh. They won a national championship. They are currently ranked 1 in the nation. CMU was able to take 3 matches off of them, but Sewanee and Pomona were not so fortunate, granted the Pomona match was only played to completion. Harding and Gonzalez Rico are looking solid at the top of the lineup – both won their singles matches in straight sets against Pomona to clinch the championship. This is a good confidence boost for the Eagles as they make their way to California and face CMS on their home courts, which will be more of a challenge than facing Pomona indoors.
Carnegie Mellon: Is it a positive thing to lose to Emory by less than the other teams? I personally don’t think so, but regardless CMU had an impressive 5-0 win over Chicago in the third place match, and an overwhelming 8-1 win over 5 seed Wash U in the first round. With their win over Chicago, Carnegie Mellon moved up to 9 in the national rankings and with their 3rd place finish have firmly cemented themselves as the second ranked team in the ASouth region, which will have big implications for them come NCAA regional time. They’ll get their shot at 2nd place Pomona this week when they travel west for spring break.
Sewanee: Despite the fact that they had to play Emory in the first round, hosts Sewanee had a great weekend. They topped both Wash U and Washington and Lee and jumped from 17 to 12 in the latest ITA rankings. I unfortunately was unable to watch any of their matches but I’m highly impressed that they were able to take 5 of 6 singles matches against Wash U and sweep doubles on W&L. Catherine Owen is being a rock at 4 singles. They should be feeling good about their season so far. They will be heading to California next for spring break where they have matches with #11 Amherst and #6 Pomona lined up. Fortunately for Sewanee, Amherst is still very early in their season, so this Indoors confidence boost could be a huge opportunity for the Tigers to get that win under their belt.
Pomona: I have a lot of respect for the west coast teams that travel to the cold for indoors, despite having practiced on actual indoor courts maybe once or twice. Although Pomona performed exactly as expected by finishing 2nd, and didn’t really give Emory a run for their money in the finals, I’m going to give them a net positive for the weekend due to the fact that they were able to overcome their indoor practice deficit in their 6-3 semifinal match against Chicago. A less tough Pomona team could have easily let that match slip away from them, especially after going down 1-2 in doubles. They entered the tournament ranked 6 in the country and are still ranked 6 in the country, but they should be fine with that since they now have a slew of teams traveling west for spring break, including #9 CMU, #11 Amherst, #5 Bowdoin, #8 Wesleyan, #12 Sewanee, #7 Tufts, #2 Williams, and #4 Middlebury. They will have plenty of opportunities to move their ranking up throughout this next month.
Neutral Weekend:
Chicago: Word on the street is that Chicago didn’t “show up” to indoors.… I’m not really sure what that means, since there are 8 women on Chicago’s roster and 7 of them saw playing time over the weekend. Sure, the loss to CMU must have stung a little but realistically their rank only dropped from 9 to 10 and they will most likely get another shot at CMU at the UAA tournament. They also had a convincing win against a fairly strong Washington and Lee squad in the first round. They still have a lot of top 20 matches during their spring break trip and throughout the rest of their season to redeem themselves. I’m going to keep them at neutral because just based on the roster, this is a team composed almost entirely of freshmen and sophomores, and I’d like to see them get more match play under their belts before I condemn the rest of their season.
Washington and Lee: Washington and Lee kept to their seed this tournament and should be content with that. Chicago proved to be a little much for them in the first round, but they then followed up their 7-2 win over Hopkins back in February with another 7-2 over Hopkins in the first consolation round. On the final day, a hot Sewanee team came out swinging and the match was probably over before the W&L players even realized it. With last year’s #2 Tessa Hill being out of commission this year with a shoulder injury, I can see how Washington and Lee might run into trouble at the top of the lineup against some of the Top 10 teams, but so far Michelle Fleenor has been holding her own at 1 singles. The next big test for the Generals will come against CMU later this month- this will be a tall task for the Generals but these rivalry matches have historically been close, and if the wind is blowing just right that day maybe the Generals will pull out a win.
Not-as Positive:
Wash U: I hate saying not-positive things about any team, especially a team that won the ITA Team Sportsmanship Award. But the struggle was so real for Wash U this year. Part of this was bad luck, since both CMU and Sewanee really came out hot this weekend. One positive thing is that the Wash U girls were able to focus for 5 matches on the final day to avoid a blowout on the weekend, and their ranking only slipped from 11 to 13, which is salvageable. It still seems like as a team they are reeling from the loss of Rebecca Ho, and I implore someone to step up to fill her shoes. A win against Chicago later this season still seems an achievable goal for the Bears, so I think it’s time for them to forget about Indoors and focus on the matches they have yet to play.
Johns Hopkins: Oh Hopkins. The crappy thing about playing consolation match after consolation match is that someone has to get last place. Unfortunately Hopkins drew the short straw this weekend. As a team they won 3 total matches this weekend. I’m not sure what else to say. As I mentioned in my season preview, the rest of Hopkins’ season has no Top 15 opponents. Right now they just need to work to make sure that they are ready for Mary Washington in April, because if I were the Eagles I would be smelling an opportunity. They still shouldn’t be worried about making NCAAs, but I honestly think they have more talent than this and it pains me to see an ASouth team run into this much trouble.
So there you have it. Huge thanks to Sewanee for putting on a wonderful tournament. The best part about Indoors is that once it comes to an end, everyone and their mothers travel west for spring break, where the sun is shining (unless it is the one time a year that SoCal gets rain) and the outdoor season really gets into gear. I’m looking forward to some kick-ass tennis over the next couple of weeks. As always, if I missed anything, or if anyone wants to start a lively discussion, comment below or shoot me an email at d3asouthwomens@gmail.com.
-D3ASW
Yeah! Finally, a DIII women’s tennis post.