The Justice

Media Credit: Julian Agin-Liebes Steven Nieman '11 shouts while hitting a shot in his No. 1 singles match against New York University.

When New York University junior Jaclyn Manning hit the final shot of her No. 4 singles match against Ariana Sanai '10 long and out of play, Sanai shook her opponent's hand, then turned to her teammates on the sideline and mouthed, "We just beat NYU."

Sanai's 6-2, 6-2 win clinched the women's tennis team's comeback victory, as the Judges defeated the Violets 6-3 last Sunday by taking all six singles matches after dropping all three doubles matches. They are now 9-6 on the season after falling to No. 14 Wellesley College at home 9-0 last Thursday. A game against Connecticut College yesterday ended too late for this edition.

The women's 6-3 victory avenged the men's home loss to the Violets the previous day. The men fell 5-4, dropping its record to 5-9 this season.

The women lost all three doubles matches by the same 8-4 score while playing outdoors but moved inside during singles play when it started raining.

Though the move indoors coincided with the comeback, coach Ben Lamanna said changing courts was not the overriding factor for the rally.

"Coming inside is a tough adjustment, and that obviously helped us out, but I think we would've done real well in singles anyway had we been outdoors the whole time," Lamanna said. "We had some fire in us after losing those doubles. We knew we didn't play well, and we weren't done yet."

Rachel Rosman '11 and Colleen Donnelly '08 again paced the Judges' singles lineup. Rosman won 0-6, 6-4, 6-1 over junior Holly Smith, taking the last two sets while playing inside.

Leading 5-4 in the second set, Rosman won four straight points on Smith's serve. After Rosman put away the first point on a forehand volley winner, Smith committed three straight unforced errors to give Rosman the set. Smith slapped her legs in disgust and could not recover.

"[Smith] played really strong in the first set, and I just needed to raise my mental toughness a lot, and it took me a while to get there," Rosman said. "I really had to focus on closing and wanted to come into the net, and I did."

Continued...

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