ORLANDO, FL. – The Pomona-Pitzer Women's Tennis team fell 5-4 in the NCAA Quarterfinals to Middlebury on Monday night at the USTA National Campus.
With the loss, the Sagehens end their season 21-3 overall and advanced all the way to the NCAA Quarterfinals for the first time since 2010.
The Sagehens started with two of the three doubles matches to take an early lead of the Panthers.
The No. 1 doubles team of Marissa Markey and Angie Zhou started the day with a win for the Sagehens. The No. 1 team battled early against Middlebury and found themselves tied 3-3 midway through the match. The Sagehens powered through the rest of the match with wins in the final five games to take an 8-3 victory.
The Sagehens also won at No. 2 with Nina Ye and Samantha Moore Thomson getting an 8-4 win after they jumped out to a big start and led 5-1 over the Panthers No. 2 team. Middlebury got a few games back to cut it to 7-4 but the Sagehens stayed strong to take an 8-4 win to take the advantage after doubles.
The Sagehens suffered their first loss of the night at No. 3 doubles with Janie Marcus and Georgia Ryan losing 8-5. The Sagehens stayed with the Panthers early on in the match after they trailed 4-3, but Middlebury pulled ahead late to take the sole win of their doubles play.
The Sagehens went into singles needing three wins to clinch the quarterfinal match and got the first one very quickly after Zhou flew through her match at No. 1 singles with a clean sweep 6-0, 6-0. Pomona-Pitzer got within one point of the clinch after Moore Thomson came through with a big win at No. 5 singles 6-4, 6-3.
The Sagehens went on to drop matches at the No. 3, 4 and 6 positions after Marissa Markey lost at No. 3 6-3, 6-4, Marcus dropping her singles match at No. 4 6-4, 7-5 and Alex Coleman falling in the No. 6 spot 6-3, 6-0 to set up a winner-take-all match at No. 2 singles.
With the match on the line, Ye faced a battle with her opponent at No. 2 singles. Ye won the first set 6-4 and after being up 5-4 in the second set, got broke and eventually fell in a hard-fought tie-breaker loss. Ye came back in the third set and took a. 4-2 lead, but went on to fall in the third set 6-4 as the Panthers knocked the Sagehens out of the NCAA Tournament.
