The rough performance of Fordham’s Women’s Tennis these past few days may be best explained by recalling this past weekend’s weather. For those who dared to venture outside Friday and Saturday, they were met with a melancholic gray sky that interrupted the overall sublime autumnal beauty that has recently taken over campus with the leaves beginning to turn over into brilliant shades of crimson and vermillion, the sun starting to hang lower and cast long and picturesque shadows.
Similarly, those that followed the exploits of the women’s tennis team this past weekend likewise saw the sublime interrupted, being met with an ugly and frustrating weekend that disrupted what has been an overall brilliant season so far.
Elaborating on this, Fordham found themselves competing in two separate tournaments this past weekend, with those who qualified for the ITA Super Regionals traveling north along the winding banks of the Hudson to West Point to compete in this prestigious tournament, while those who sadly failed to qualify staying back in the Bronx to defend the hallowed grounds of Rose Hill in the Fordham Fall Classic. However, as aforementioned, these tournaments played out rather disappointingly for the Rams, as they were only able to scrape together six individual victories across the plethora of matches that they played in.
Looking first at the ITA Super Regionals at U.S. Military Academy West Point, Fordham boasted three total competitors in the tournament, as graduate student Raffaela Alhach’s deep run in the singles bracket and senior Rose Hu and freshman Anlin Xie’s respective dominance on the doubles portion of the Northeast Regionals qualified them for the event. Unfortunately, however, nobody made it past the first round of this competition, as Alhach fell in her first round match against Boston College’s Michelle Kleynerman 2-6, 6-3, 2-6, while Hu and Xie sadly did not find a way to triumph in their heartbreaking 7-5, 4-6, (8)-(10) loss to a Dartmouth duo.
The story was not much different back home in the Bronx in the Fordham Fall Classic, as the Rams encountered the same distinct lack of success. First and foremost, across the the two days of singles competition, Fordham went a collective 3-11, having to wait till the second day of the tournament (Sunday) to find themselves in the win column with Hu’s 6-2, 6-2 victory over New Jersey Institute of Technology’s (NJIT) Shivani Ingle, senior Eleni Fasoula’s 6-0, 7-5 win over Shalom Salvi of NJIT and graduate student Demetria Jhaveri’s 6-4, 6-2 triumph over Asima Sazan of NJIT. Apart from these three matches, the sledding was beyond rough, with some of the team’s normally strong competitors uncharacteristically struggling to assert themselves: veteran leaders junior Lorraine Bergman and graduate student Franny Shea were unable to collect a win across their four combined matches, freshman phenoms Xie and Julianne Nguyen both stumbled in their respective singles appearances, etc.
The team’s doubles performance, while still disappointing, was admittedly much better, as while the Rams still boasted a losing record, its tally was a respectable three wins and four losses. However, not unlike the singles side, all of their wins only came on the second day of the competition, with the pairing of Alhach and Shea winning a closely contested 6-4 battle, the duo of Fasoula and Camila Baeza eeking out a tight 7-6(3) victory, and the twosome of freshmen Cindy Zhou and Nguyen winning with relative ease in a 6-2 thrashing.
Now moving away from the objective, one can only hope that this was but a slight blip in the season for the Rams and nothing more.
Generally speaking, these sorts of rather rough outings can linger with a team for a while, especially if they occurred when playing within the greystone confines of your own campus and atop your own courts. However, it is imperative that the Rams make like a goldfish and quickly forget these disappointing results, as they have a quick turnaround, traveling up north this week to compete in the ITF W60 Toronto.
I, for one, expect them to bounce back in a big way on this international stage, as there is simply too much talent on this team — both in terms of the players and the coaches — for there to be a prolonged proverbial slide.
