No. 27 Yale Wins First Ivy League Test With a Sweep of Penn

Steph Kent. (photo by Rick Limpert)

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Friday, the No. 27 ranked Yale women's tennis team opened its Ivy League season on a beautiful sunny day with a dominant 7-0 victory over Penn.

Yale started off with a 2-1 victory in doubles, giving the team a 1-0 lead for the 15^th time in 16 matches.  Senior Vicky Brook and freshman Hanna Yu teamed up at No. 1 against Penn's Sol Eskenazi and Jules Rodin in a battle of ranked pairs.  Brook and Yu are ranked No. 30, while Eskenazi and Rodin are No. 49.  The pairs stayed close early, swapping games off, but Eskenazi and Rodin eventually pulled away, winning 8-4. In the second spot, the No. 61 ranked pairing of sophomore Annie Sullivan and junior Elizabeth Epstein went up against Daniela DePaoli and Alex Ion.  Sullivan and Epstein started off hot and never slowed down, winning 8-0 in a rout. At No. 3, sophomore Blair Seideman and senior captain Steph Kent teamed up against Stephanie Do and Emma Whitfield, winning 8-5.  The match was less close than the score would indicate, as Kent and Seideman went up 7-3 and simply had trouble winning the last game.    

In singles, Epstein led the way at No. 1, where she topped Eskenazi in three sets.  Eskenazi took the first set 6-1, but Epstein battled back to claim the next two sets 6-1 and 6-3 and win the match.  At No. 2, Yu won in straight sets over Do, 6-3, 6-4.  In the third spot, Siedeman put together a 6-3, 6-1 victory over Ion.  At No. 4, Kent topped DePaoli 6-4, 6-1.  At No. 5, Brook won easily, topping Srinidhi Raghavan 6-1, 6-0.  Finally, at No. 6, Sullivan was victorious over Whitfield 6-1, 6-0, completing the 7-0 victory for the Bulldogs. 

Yale will face its second Ivy League test Saturday, when No. 69 Princeton comes to visit in a rematch of the ECAC Indoor Championship finals, which Yale won 4-2. 

Report by Calvin Bohn '14, Yale Sports Publicity