Women’s Tennis Stay Strong at Tourneys
The MIT women’s tennis team finished off their season strong at the New England Women’s Intercollegiate Tennis Tournament (NEWITT) and the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Championship over the past two weekends.
At NEWITT, MIT started out strong with all four teams of two (playing both doubles and singles matches) advancing to the second round. In the A draw, the number one team of Leslie A. Hansen ’10 and Anastasia Vishnevetsky ’12 played amazing tennis and made it all the way to the main draw semi-finals where they were defeated by a team from Amherst College. This led to Hansen and Vishnevetsky being named the doubles team of the week by NEWMAC for the second week in a row.
Anisa K. McCree ’10 and Melissa A. Diskin ’11 lost in the second round to a team from Tufts University, and then went on to barely lose in a tie break to a Trinity College team in the consolation bracket.
In the B draw, Karina N. Pikhart ’09 and Yi Wang ’09 also fell to Tufts in the second round, but turned around and won the consolation draw, defeating a team from Connecticut College for the title.
The team of Alexandria C. Hall ’12 and Jennifer A. Rees ’11 made it to the third round before losing to Wellesley College. Matches at the tournament, both won and lost, were generally extremely close and every player fought hard to the end.
In the NEWMAC Championship Tournament, MIT finished up the season with a strong showing, falling with hard-fought matches against Wellesley in the finals.
Many MIT players earned First Team All Conference selections. Hansen, on top of being selected to play number one for the First Team All Conference, won tennis player of the year. Hansen and Vishnevetsky were also picked for the number one doubles spot. Vishnevetsky was picked to play number two singles, and Wang was picked for the number four slot.
For the Second Team All Conference, McCree and Hall were picked for the five and six singles spots. Wang and Pikhart were also picked for the number three doubles spot for the Second Team All Conference.
On top of all this, MIT Coach Carol Matsuzaki received the Coach of the Year award. According to Matsuzaki, she is most proud of the fact that the team received the NEWMAC Sportsmanship Award this year.