Blue Tennis Defeats RPI 5-4 in Home Opener

WELLESLEY, Mass. -- The Wellesley College tennis team earned a hard fought 5-4 victory over RPI inside Dorothy Towne Fieldhouse on Saturday afternoon.

The Blue (1-1) began the day by winning two of three doubles matches. Sophomore Cristiana DeAgazio (Winchester, Mass.) and senior Michelle Shen (Dallas, Texas) earned the first victory with an 8-2 win over Nitya Subramaniam (Bridgewater, N.J.) and Brooke Bauer (Butler, Penn.) on the third court. In the No. 1 doubles, sophomores Annissa Mu (Saratoga, Calif.) and Melinda Alviar (Indianapolis, Ind.) went down to the wire with Alex Mednikova (Belle Mead, N.J.) and Rani Jones (New Market, Md.) with the Blue hanging on to a 8-7, 7-5 victory.

The duo of Krisia Flores Gonzalez (Sugar Land, Texas) and Lorna Flores Gonzalez (Sugar Land, Texas) for RPI defeated Michaela Markwart (Hanover, Mass.) and Libby Chang (San Marino, Calif.) by a score of 8-4.

Mu kicked off the singles with a victory over Lorna Flores Gonzalez at 6-1, 6-4 in the No. 2 match. Following was a big win for Jones over Chang by a score of 6-1, 6-2. The No. 1 singles match went down to the wire between Mednikova and Markwart. Mednikova got the best of Markwart and earned a 7-5, 7-6 win for RPI. In the No. 5 matchup, Alviar picked up a dominant win for the Blue by a score of 6-1, 6-4 over Bauer. The Engineers would bounce back as Subramaniam defeated Shen in three sets 3-6, 6-2, 13-11.

The final match of the day ended up being the deciding factor. DeAgazio took the first set 7-5 over Khudyakov. The sophomore kept her foot on the pedal and closed out Khudyakov 6-4 in the second set and picked up the first overall win for the Blue.

Wellesley will hit the road for a match with NYU on Saturday, March 5 at 1:00 PM.