The women's tennis team showed off its skills recently, playing well at the ITA New England Championships, hosted by MIT last weekend.
Co-captain Sarah D'Elia '09 and teammate Brett Davis '10 dominated the doubles bracket, advancing to the semifinals of the tournament.
"The high of the weekend was probably Brett and Sarah making it to the semifinals of the doubles," Emily Lombardi '12 said. "They were playing really well together and it was fun to watch."
"The duo of Davis and D'Elia had an awesome run," Rachel Waldman '09 said. "On the final day of competition they fell to the eventual champions, but they fought hard to the end and gained a lot of experience on the court."
The power doubles team defeated pairs from Middlebury, Amherst, and Williams before falling to Cary Gibson and Nikki Reich of Williams in the semis.
Individually, D'Elia and Davis both did well, each snagging a first-round singles win.
"Brett Davis had a huge victory over No. 5 seed Meghan McCooey who made it to the semifinal of the national tournament last year. The match was three hours long and showed extreme patience from Davis, who didn't let McCooey's steady ball get the best of her," Waldman said.
D'Elia also proved strong on the singles court, defeating Edwina Stewart of Tufts, before falling in the second round to Amherst's Natasha Brown.
"D'Elia had a great singles run, making it to the quarterfinals and falling to a solid Amherst player," Waldman said.
Overall, the team gained experience in doubles play, and looks to improve as they head into the rest of the fall season, and into the spring.
"It was the first intense weekend of the season in terms of the level of tennis at the tournament, and it was hard to jump right in after only a few weeks of practice," Waldman said. "But all together the team performed very well and we had a lot of fun doing it."
"We learned what we need to do to beat some of the top doubles teams...we can play with these teams and beat them if we work on staying aggressive at the net and playing smart," Lombardi said.
The players heads to Middlebury for a doubles tournament this weekend, where they hope to gain experience and improve their doubles play.
"Our goal at Middlebury is to play a lot of doubles, and play good doubles...Middlebury is our chance to practice and improve our doubles' mentality and strategy," Waldman said.