ORLANDO, Fla. – The third-ranked Wesleyan women's tennis team fell 5-0 to No. 4 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in the NCAA Semifinals on Tuesday afternoon from the USTA National Campus. The Cardinals suffered their first defeat of the season, seeing their 23-0 start to the season come to an end. The Athenas (26-3) advance to their third straight national title match, having won the championship in 2018, and will take on No. 1 University of Chicago on Wednesday.
Wesleyan advanced to the quarterfinal round for the fourth straight season and made it into the semifinal round for the third straight season. This recent success is all new ground for the program, which had never made it to the NCAA Quarterfinals prior to 2018.
CMS made a statement in doubles, as the Athenas seized a 3-0 lead behind a strong showing from #1 Nikolina Batoshvili and Alisha Chulani as they toppled
Caitlyn Ferrante '23 and
Sasha Gaeth '23 by a score of 8-2. Sydney Lee and Gabby Lee then took down
Nika Vesely '25 and
Sophie Henderson '22 at #2 in a match that Wesleyan led 3-2 but in the next six games, the Athenas clipped the Cardinals in multiple deuces, but the Lee pairing kept coming up with clutch points in big spots to pull away.
The final doubles point came down to #3 where
Kristina Yu '22 and
Renna Mohsen-Breen '25 took Sarah Bahsoun and Devon Wolfe into a tiebreak. Bahsoun had a volley for a key point to give the Athenas a 4-2 lead at the changeover and they ended up finishing off the win when a Wesleyan lob sailed long to give CMS a commanding 3-0 lead heading into singles.
Needing five wins in singles, it was an uphill climb that the Cardinals had in front of them but after a 6-0, 6-0 win for CMS at #4, the clinching point came soon after as
Katie Fleischman '23 was forced into a retirement due to injury at #3, sealing the match for CMS.
Ferrante was the only Cardinal to win the first set in singles play as she took the first 6-3 before trailing 3-1 in the second set to Crystal Juan before play was halted. Vesley dropped a close first set 7-5 at #2 to Sydney Lee while
Serim Jin '23 and Yu were both battling through the second set as the match came to an end.
