Brown women’s tennis team swept Sunday with two victories, defeating UMass 6-1 and Fordham 4-3. With these wins, the Bears improve to 11-3 on the season and 8-1 at home, while the Minutewomen fall to 6-3, and the Rams drop to 5-4.
In their first match against UMass, Brown dominated, with the 63rd ranked doubles duo of sophomore Addison Ahlstrom and senior Britany Lau winning their match at first doubles, 6-3. Freshman Phoebe Peus and sophomore Lindsey Hofflander secured a 6-1 victory at second doubles for the first point of the day. Brown then quickly sealed the match with a pair of defaults and junior Olivia Mariotti taking fourth singles (6-2, ret). Junior Ali Benedetto, and sophomore Gabby Soliman also won their singles matches, and Brown took the match 6-1.
Playing against Fordham in the second match, Brown earned the first point with Benedetto and junior Nora Lee, and Hofflander and Peus winning their matches. Peus made it 2-0 Brown lead by winning second singles (6-3, 6-2), but Fordham took a 3-2 advantage with victories at third, first, and fourth singles. Hofflander then secured the sixth point at sixth singles, tying the score at 3-3. The exciting three-set match at fifth singles went in favor of Mariotti (6-4, 2-6, 78-66), giving Brown the 4-3 victory.
Head Coach Lucie Schmidhauser was impressed with the team’s professionalism and grit, “Our team has faced a lot of adversity lately, but the women keep battling and competing so hard, no matter what the obstacles. It is truly a pleasure to coach a team of players who are so focused on the process of getting better, day in and day out. This type of mindset doesn’t always necessarily show in results, but today it went our way.”
Brown’s next challenge is a doubleheader on Saturday.
