The Fordham women’s tennis team traveled to Long Island on Oct. 15-16, where they took on students from Hofstra University and Fairleigh Dickinson University at the 2022 Hofstra Invitational. The team had not competed in this tournament in five years, when they won two flights in October 2017. 

This year, they found similar success as senior Avery Aude won two singles matches and two doubles matches against opponents from both universities. Aude defeated her first opponent on day one when she won her singles match, with both sets ending 6-0 against Kaitlyn Ferguson from Hofstra. Later that day, she defeated the Hofstra duo of Deniz Soyer and Ananyaa Bhargava along with her graduate student teammate Valeriya Deminova by a score of 6-3. On day two, Aude continued to win as she defeated Anastasia Lim from Fairleigh Dickinson 7-5, 6-3. She again teamed with Deminova to overcome Fairleigh Dickinson’s Alena Kubanova and Namie Isago. 

Fordham had a few other standouts throughout the rest of the Hofstra Invitational, including sophomore Lorraine Bergmann, freshman Sofie Siem and senior Rachelle Yang. Each of them won three of their four singles and doubles matches, respectively. Although there were mostly positives from this contest, graduate student Lindsay Hung struggled, losing all four of the matches she played in. Hung is typically a very productive player and will surely bounce back in the future as the team looks towards their winter season in January.

In other news, Valeriya Deminova competed in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Super Regional Championship this past Friday at Yale University. She was able to play in this event after her three impressive wins at the ITA Regionals. Unfortunately, her impressive run came to an end at the hands of the University of Pennsylvania’s Sabine Rutlauka in the first round. Deminova lost both sets, 6-1, 7-5.

Although this was not the desired outcome, it was still impressive to make it as far as she did and advance much further than she had in the same tournament back in 2019. Deminova is in her fifth year, and her collegiate tennis career is likely coming to a close in the next year or two. Nevertheless, it is excellent to see measurable improvement within a player from the beginning of her career to the near end. It will be interesting to see how Deminova continues this season and if she can continue to perform at a high level.