The Case Western Reserve University women's tennis team, ranked 16th in Division III by the ITA, will begin the spring portion of its 2024-25 season on Saturday, February 15 with a home dual match against 35th-ranked Hope College at 3 p.m. at the Mayfield Village Racquet Club.
The Spartans are looking to continue their success from the fall season and the previous three spring campaigns when the team qualified for the NCAA Championship every year with multiple All-Americans.
Senior Lily McCloskey will lead the Spartans after qualifying for the NCAA Doubles Championship in each of her first three seasons with the squad and earning three All-America honors. Last fall, she went 6-2 in singles play and 6-1 in doubles play, reaching the quarterfinals of both the ITA Central Regional Singles and Doubles Championships. Ranked 38th nationally in singles play following the fall schedule, McCloskey has a 47-24 (.662) career singles record and 69-19 (.784) career doubles record, the second-most doubles wins in program history.
At the ITA Regional Championships, junior Asha Shukla and senior Anna Kan won the consolation doubles bracket with a 4-1 record. The partnership posted a 5-1 record in the fall season with both players going 4-2 in singles play during the fall.
Juniors Katalina Wang and Elsa Syed, graduate student Laurel Utterback, and sophomore Katie Wong are also expected to play a large role for the Spartans in the spring. Wang, an All-University Athletic Association Second Team selection during her first year with the program, went 3-3 in singles play and 6-2 in doubles play, partnering primarily with McCloskey. Syed posted a 3-1 doubles record and 2-2 singles record in the fall. Utterback, who previously played at Division I Bucknell, went 5-2 in singles play, and Wong, a transfer from Skidmore College, had a 3-2 singles record.
CWRU will play at least 11 teams ranked in the ITA preseason national top 40. Following their matchup against the Dutch, the Spartans will play three consecutive home matches against Allegheny, 25th-ranked Denison, and Oberlin. On a trip to Indiana during the first weekend in March, Case Western Reserve will take on DePauw and 26th-ranked Grinnell. Following spring break, the team heads to Newport News, Virginia, for matchups against 17th-ranked Christopher Newport, 34th-ranked NYU, and seventh-ranked Johns Hopkins.
The team returns home at the end of the month for five consecutive matches on campus, starting on March 28 against 20th-ranked Kenyon. The following day, CWRU faces Ohio Northern and will conclude the weekend with a visit from 23rd-ranked Bowdoin. 27th-ranked Mary Washington makes the trip to Cleveland on April 5, and Case Western Reserve plays its last home match of the season on April 6 against Otterbein. To close the regular season, the team travels to Georgia for matches against Berry, 19th-ranked Babson, and fifth-ranked Emory.
The Spartans will be in Altamonte Springs, Florida, from April 24-26 for the 2025 UAA Championships. In addition to CWRU, Emory, and NYU, the conference also features nationally top-ranked Chicago, sixth-ranked WashU, 12th-ranked Carnegie Mellon, 27th-ranked Brandeis, and Rochester. CWRU is hoping for its fourth consecutive team berth in the NCAA Championship, which begins with the First Round on May 9 at campus sites. The national quarterfinals, semifinals, and championship will be held in Claremont, California, from May 20-23 with the national singles and doubles championships to follow from May 24-27.
