“Leaf subsides to leaf…” will likely be the motto of the Fordham women’s tennis team this year, as a seemingly daunting, but certainly promising, rebuild seems to be in store for the program this upcoming season. This can be largely attributed to the fact that, while last year’s team had a highly successful 2022-23 campaign, finishing with a solid 11-7 record, winning the Atlantic 10 crown for the first time in program history and making the NCAA tournament (where they would unfortunately fall to the Princeton University Tigers in the first round), the majority of last year’s core no longer calls Rose Hill their home.
Avery Aude (named First Team All A-10), Rachelle Yang, Carlota Casasampere Escoda (named Second Team All A-10), Valeriya Deminova (named First Team All A-10) and Lindsay Hung (named First Team All A-10), have all moved on from the team, taking with them their energy, experience and technical bravado that provided the program with a spark and standard that will be certainly hard to replicate.
However, on a more positive note, the program still calls reigning A-10 Coach of the Year Michael Sowter its leader: a man who has simply been on fire recently, ushering the program to two of its best ever seasons in back-to-back campaigns (the team went 14-7 with an A-10 Championship Game appearance in 2021-22). Moreover, he not only returns three of the most talented players from last year’s team in senior Eleni Fasoula (named First Team All A-10), sophomore Sofie Siem and junior Lorraine Bergmann, but also has a glut of talented incoming freshmen and new transfers to work with. Headlining these newcomers to the greystone confines of Rose Hill are freshman Julianne Nguyen (a former Top 100 recruit according to TennisRecruiting.net), Indiana University transfer Xiaowei “Rose” Xu and Bryant University transfer Camila Baeza. Additionally, promising freshmen Anlin Xie and Xintong “Cindy” Zhou round out a strong recruiting class that looks poised to make an instant impact. With all this talent being molded by Coach Sowter’s undeniable coaching prowess, it would not be the slightest bit surprising to see this team potentially replicate the success that they enjoyed last year.
Taking a quick glance at the more logistical side of the upcoming campaign, while the schedule has not yet been officially finalized, one should expect the Rams to clash with a few of the usual suspects: the Bobcats of Quinnipiac University, the Black Knights of Army West Point and the Dragons of Drexel University. Moreover, Fordham will once again face off against a batch of A-10 teams due to conference requirements, with the crown atop their heads certainly putting a target on their backs for these in-conference showdowns.
The 2022-23 Women’s Tennis season is certainly going to be an interesting one for the Rams, as the brilliant team of years past is now gone, giving way to an equally as exciting young core that could make some noise.
