The Case Western Reserve University women's tennis team, ranked 16th in Division III, opened up their 2019 spring season with a 5-4 loss against 39th-ranked Hope College at the Cleveland Skating Club on Saturday afternoon.
The Spartans dropped to 0-1 on the campaign with the loss, while the Flying Dutch raised their record to 2-1.
CWRU started off the day strong, taking two of the three doubles to open a 2-1 advantage over Hope. Picking up doubles victories were the pairings of sophomore Madeleine Paolucci and sophomore Nicole Cardwell, who defeated Hope's Amanda Bandrowski and Claire Hallock 8-1 in the first doubles match, and sophomore Mira Amin and freshman Shreyaa Mukund, who picked up an 8-2 win at third doubles over Bailey Chorney and Erin Labarge. The Spartans lone loss came in the second match, where freshman Sneha Karnam and freshman Nidhi Jha suffered an 8-5 defeat to Taylor Labarge and Sydney Jackson.
In singles action, the Spartans dropped the first two singles matches, allowing the Flying Dutch to come back and take a 3-2 lead. Amin bested Taylor Labarge at fourth singles 6-4, 6-2 to push CWRU back to a tie at 3-3. After a loss at third singles, Jha came back to win the fifth singles match (6-2, 6-3) over Chorney. In the sixth and final singles match of the day, Liz Pniewski defeated Mukund in three sets, 0-6, 7-5, 6-4, to secure the match victory.
Case Western Reserve will wrap-up the weekend when they play host to Kalamazoo College at the Cleveland Skating Club for a 9:00 a.m. meeting on Sunday, February 17th.