In another step toward achieving a season-long goal of improving its doubles play, the women's tennis team traveled to Middlebury over the weekend for its first-ever visit to the annual Gail Smith doubles tournament.
Of the Jumbos' four entries into the tournament, one team, featuring sophomore Julia Browne and junior captain Meghan McCooey, advanced to the championship bracket before taking third place overall. Tufts sent three other pairs — freshman Jen Lavet and sophomore Edwina Stewart, freshman Jen LaCara and sophomore Hillary Rosen, and junior Laura Hoguet and freshman Nat Schils — as well as freshman Kaitlyn Pritchard, who was teamed with sophomore Kathryn Friedman of Williams.
Even after the careful attention the Jumbos paid to their doubles play both this weekend and throughout the fall, the task of perfecting their doubles skills remains a work in progress.
"We certainly were executing some of what we've been working on," coach Kate Bayard said. "However, we have a long way to go still with our doubles … We really need to bring our aggressiveness to the next level — dictate more, take more chances and be okay with getting burned once in a while. Basically, we need to be the aggressor and not the reactor throughout the course of every match. It was exciting to see some of that over the weekend, but it would go in phases."
In their second time paired together, Browne and McCooey began the tournament by winning their first four matches. The duo first breezed through Saturday's round robin play at a 3-0 clip before scoring an 8-6 victory over Bowdoin senior captain Sarah D'Elia and freshman Emily Lombardi in Sunday's quarterfinal.
"We came out knowing that even though they weren't necessarily the top teams, they were going to fight and be ready to play," McCooey said. "They definitely put the pressure on us, so we had to bring our top game, really be aggressive at net and close out the point."
The quarterfinal victory set up a semifinal showdown against junior Brittany Berckes and sophomore Natasha Brown of Amherst, the same team Browne and McCooey beat in a 9-8 (11) thriller at the ITA New England semifinals at the end of September. The rematch once again went to a tiebreak, but Berckes and Brown pulled away this time around, winning 9-8 (7)
But Browne and McCooey didn't go down without a fight. Trailing in the tiebreak 6-3, the Jumbos saved all three match points to knot the score at 6-6. Tufts then had a match point of its own at 7-6, but Browne's attempt at a win-clincher landed just wide.
That opportunity was the last the Jumbos would get, as Berckes and Brown eventually closed the door with a shot that clipped the top of the net and rolled onto the Jumbos' side. The Jeffs duo went on to take the title, downing the Williams team of senior co-captain Cary Gibson and sophomore Nicole Reich by a score of 8-6 in the finals.
"It was a really, really good doubles match," Browne said of the semifinals. "They're a really good team; we barely beat them at ITAs, and this time it was just a matter of a couple points here and there. But I'm really proud of the way Meghan and I handled ourselves out there. We fought really hard, and we didn't give up when we were down in the tiebreak. It was a really good demonstration of how much we wanted to win, and even though we came up a little short, we definitely put everything out there."
Browne and McCooey regrouped in time for the third-place match, defeating host Middlebury's duo of freshmen Victoria Aiello and Anna Burke 8-4. It was the second consecutive strong showing for the pair after a runner-up finish at ITAs in their first tournament together. Browne and McCooey's early success, particularly against stiff competition — Berckes is a two-time national champion at doubles — has the pair eager for the challenges ahead.
"It's really good practice for us to be playing these top teams now because when we go to Alabama for Nationals [on Oct. 16], we're going to be coming up against some really good competition," Browne said. "It gives us a lot of confidence that we can compete with these teams because any of those other teams are going to be just as competitive, and it definitely gives us a sense of feeling ready for that tournament coming up."
Tufts nearly had a second team, consisting of Lavet and Stewart, join Browne and McCooey in the championship bracket. But in first-round play, the duo let a 5-2 lead slip away to freshman Stephanie Langer and senior Rachel Waldman of Bowdoin, leading to a costly 8-6 loss. Lavet and Stewart rebounded to win their final two matches and finished the tournament 2-1.
Both of the Jumbos' other two pairings — LaCara/Rosen and Hoguet/Schils — went winless in round robin play. But in a tournament where the focus was less on results than performance, each tandem showed positive gains.
"Jen LaCara and Hillary can serve as a model for the rest of the team as far as communication and their energy out there," Bayard said. "That's how I'd like every team to be. And Laura and Nat also work really well together. They seem like they've been playing together for at least a year. Those two teams were great as far as their dynamics."
Tufts has the rest of the week off before it hosts its final dual match of the fall season Saturday against NYU. The focus of the match, unsurprisingly, will be on building off the weekend at Middlebury and continuing to hone doubles skills.
"As a team, we'd definitely like to sweep the doubles and use everything that we've learned from this weekend and all the practice that we've put in to our doubles play to go out strong from the beginning," McCooey said. "As far as singles goes, we're all pretty confident, and we're going to have to work hard to earn each point. But I think the focus right from the start of the match is going to be our doubles."
