Women’s Tennis: Garnet Scatter Blue Jays, Make CC Final
SWARTHMORE, Pa. - #1 seeded Swarthmore defeated #4 seed Johns Hopkins University Saturday afternoon on Faulkner Courts by a score of 8-1. The victory earns the Garnet, winners of 12 straight matches, a spot in the 2006 Centennial Conference Women's Tennis Championship match on Sunday against second-seed Washington (Md.) College. The match will start at 12:00 p.m. on Faulkner Courts.
Washington claimed a spot in the championship match with a 8-1 defeat of third-seed Muhlenberg on Saturday afternoon.
Swarthmore will be playing for a second consecutive Centennial Conference championship and third overall.
For the Garnet (15-2), Marissa Matthew's '07 sealed the morning win with a 6-3, 6-1 triumph over Hopkins' Jill Seidman at No. 3 singles.
The Garnet swept doubles play, with No. 1 pair Matthews and Sonya Reynolds '07 showing Blue Jays Brittany Matava and Tanya Gulnik some fine tennis. Both tandems drove balls to the corners of the court, putting their perfected volleys to use. But when it came time to earn the point, the Garnet had one up on the Jays. Matthews and Reynolds took the match 8-4, earning their 17th doubles victory of the season.
Swarthmore's No. 2 doubles team, Erica Lukoski '08 and Jennie Park '09, made short work of Hopkins' Jill Seidman and Debbie Blass, winning 8-2 while at No. 3 Swarthmore's Sara Sargent '07 and Waverly Lutz '07 won 8-3 over Stephanie Carr and Holly Claire.
Matthews, playing at No. 3, fought throughout the first set of her singles match, managing to pull herself out from an early 2-1 deficit, and nearly took the second set without a blemish. Senior Emily Townsend maintained the upper hand in her match against Hopkins' Mary Gorski, winning 6-4, 7-6 at No. 5.
Playing at No.6 singles, Lutz dropped the first set 4-6 to JHU's Debbie Blass but battled back to take the second and third 6-2, 6-3 for her tenth victory of the season.