Wellesley Tennis Opens Home Invitational With Victory Over NYU

WELLESLEY, Mass. – The Wellesley College tennis team opened their 2009 home invitational with an 8-1 win over New York University.  The victory improves the Blue to 14-5 while NYU falls to 3-7. 

Wellesley started strong, taking two out of three doubles matches.  At number one, the Blue tendem of Marie Watanabe (Houston, TX) and Grace Cheng (Columbia, MD) cruised to an 8-1 win over Liz Stachtiaris and Stephanie Tu.  Wellesley followed with another 8-1 win at second doubles, with the team of Mohona Siddique (Chevy Chase, MD) and Jacqueline Shen (Calgary, Alberta, CA) defeating Lisa Mijovic and Mandy Freedman. 
NYU got on the board at the third spot, as Liz Feldman and Lena-Sophie Krups picked up an 8-6 victory over Wellesley's Anjalee Martin (Silver Spring, MD) and Nathalie Herman (San Francisco, CA).

After taking a 2-1 lead in doubles, the Blue swept the singles competition to take the match, 8-1.  At first singles, Watanabe was a 6-0, 6-1 winner over Stachtiaris, while Cheng won a 6-4, 7-6 (1) match over Tu.  In the third spot, Siddique took her match 6-3, 6-1 over Freeman while at four, Katie Ching (Kaneohe, HI) won 6-1, 6-0 over Feldman.  Wrapping up singles, Herman won 6-1, 6-1 over Mijovic at five, and Martin was a 6-2, 6-2 winner over Krups at six.

The Wellesley Invitational will continue tomorrow beginning at 9:00am.  The Blue will battle The College of New Jersey in the early match, while NYU squares off with MIT at 11:00am.  Wrapping up the tournament, Wellesley will face NEWMAC-foe MIT at 3:00pm.