FREDERICKSBURG, Va. -- One day after taking down the No. 26-ranked University of Mary Washington, the No. 18-ranked Kenyon College women's tennis team was back at UMW to take on No. 20 Tufts University. The Owls took an early edge in doubles, but the Jumbos pulled away in singles to hand Kenyon a 5-4 defeat on the last leg of a six-game road trip.
Kenyon fell to 3-5, while Tufts tallied its first dual win after starting their season 0-3. The teams showed why there is not much separation between them in the national rankings as the dual featured three competitive matches, including one that needed a tiebreaker, in doubles before seeing three singles matches extend to three sets and another that had a second-set tiebreaker.
The Jumbos struck first with an 8-6 No. 2 doubles win over Shadia Amado Aguad and Eleni Dakos, but the Owls bounced back. Kenyon's No. 1 duo of Eleni Lazaridou and Allaire Berl battled for a close 8-7 victory after pulling away 7-3 in the tiebreaker. At No. 3 doubles, Lalasa Nagireddy and Ana Brand put Kenyon ahead 2-1 in the dual with an 8-5 win.
Unfortunately for the Owls, the doubles momentum did not carry over to singles. Tufts secured a couple of straight-set wins over Dakos (7-5, 6-3) and Berl (6-0, 7-6 (8-6)) to open the slate, and the Jumbos completed a comeback with wins in four of six bouts. Still, Tufts did not waltz to victory as Kenyon stayed neck-and-neck and kept the Jumbos from clinching a truncated win.
However, Lazaridou kept Kenyon in the dual with her own straight-set victory. The sophomore clinched a competitive No. 1 singles match 7-5, 7-5, tying the overall team score at 3-3. The back-and-forth battle continued when Tufts pulled within one point of clinching the dual by taking down Brand at No. 5, but the first-year fought hard in a 6-3, 1-6, 6-1 contest. Kenyon bounced back again as Amado Aguad finished a 7-5, 5-7, 6-3 decision in the No. 3 match, knotting the score at 4-4. Everything came down to the result of the sixth and final singles match, and, despite a valiant effort, Nagireddy came up just short in a 6-4, 5-7, 7-5 battle as Tufts clinched the best-of-nine dual by a score of 5-4.
After a stretch of six road outings over spring break, the Owls return to Gambier to start a four-dual homestand. Kenyon's stretch of matchups at the Jasper Tennis Center begins with a doubleheader against Otterbein University and Earlham College on Sunday, March 24.
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