Fordham Women’s Tennis swung momentum around their way, netting a pair of road wins to sweep the weekend. Coming off back-to-back losses in the midst of a lengthy road trip, Fordham University defeated North Carolina Central University and their Atlantic 10 rival, Davidson College, leaving them poised to finish the season strong. 

Fordham kicked off the weekend with a 5-2 win over North Carolina Central. The pairing of senior Valeriya Deminova and junior Avery Aude improved to 8-0 in doubles play on the season with their match win, while the pairing of graduate student Carlota Casasampere-Escoda and junior Rachelle Yang won their match to secure the doubles point. Fordham also came out on top in four of the six singles matches, with Casasampere-Escoda, Yang, senior Nicole Li and freshman Lorraine Bergmann all earning wins. 

The Rams remained in North Carolina to take on Davidson College on Sunday, a team that sat in fourth place in the A-10, as they looked to leap past Fordham in the standings. Fordham remained atop Davidson, battling for the 4-3 win behind some excellent singles play. Despite dropping the doubles point to the Wildcats, Fordham once again took four out of six in singles as Aude, Deminova, Casasampere-Escoda and Bergmann won their respective matches. 

Sunday’s win was their first against an A-10 opponent, a strong bounce back after the Rams dropped their first match in-conference to the University of Massachusetts (UMass) the previous Sunday. This weekend as a whole was an impressive showing from a Fordham team that was looking to avoid a second-half collapse. With just three games left to play in the regular season, Fordham sits at 10-4, maintaining third place in the A-10. UMass is directly ahead of them at 12-4, and while it’s unlikely Fordham will be able to leap them this late in the season, they would have a chance if Fordham won out and UMass lost their last three. UMass defeated Fordham 5-2 earlier in the season, so in the event of a tie, the tiebreaker would go to UMass. 

The weekend sweep places Fordham firmly in the driver’s seat as they look to close out the final game of their six-game road trip against the University of Rhode Island (URI). It’s a second straight A-10 opponent for the Rams, and it will mark their last in-conference game before the A-10 tournament. Fordham should have the advantage against URI that sits two games under .500 at 8-10. They’ve seen somewhat better times of late, going 2-1 after a seven-game losing streak that left them winless in March. Still, Fordham is a more complete team and should be in a good position to secure their second straight conference win. Fordham and URI will square off this Saturday at 1 p.m.