W. Tennis Overcomes Key Injuries

The Harvard women’s tennis team performed admirably at the ITA Eastern Women’s Regional Championship—the second of three national championship events for college tennis—but its captains were noticeably missing from the helm.

Junior co-captains Courtney Bergman and Susanna Lingman—arguably the team’s two best players—did not play any tennis this weekend at the tournament held in Blacksburg, VA. Both were forced to sit out due to similar chronic knee problems.

Lingman was slated to compete but withdrew from the field before her first match on Saturday due to serious pain in her knee. The junior had been bothered by the injury for roughly the past two weeks, and had even taken days off in hopes of improvement by the time of the tournament’s commencement.

Bergman, on the other hand, has been suffering from what reportedly amounts to a more severe version of the same exact knee problem Lingman has long endured, with future arthroscopic surgery to repair a potentially torn meniscus a distinct possibility.

But rest and recovery now are critical to the team’s future as soon as this season.

“In [ITA’s] and these more individual tournaments, their presence was missed because we’re a tight team and we want them to be out there,” sophomore Alli Pillinger said. “But luckily, now, it doesn’t count for actual team ranking or points. We definitely feel their absence and miss their support, but it’s also better that they sit out now due to the possibility of them not being able to playing in the spring and making things worse.”

Indeed, with that thought in mind, the remaining members of the team rolled to several notable performances of their own.

In singles, junior Alexis Martire advanced to the Sweet 16, defeating St. John’s Kristina Bothova and Penn’s Rachel Shweky in two sets each before falling to the tournament’s third seed, William and Mary’s Megan Muth, 6-2, 7-5 on Sunday afternoon.

Fifth-seeded sophomore Eva Wang brushed aside Old Dominion’s Kerstin Endlich and William and Mary’s Lena Sherbakov on the way to her round of 16 match-up against Virginia’s Mariko Fritz-Krockow, against whom she ultimately fell 7-6 (5), 6-1.

“The match-ups were really tough,” said Wang, referring to the field that featured the top players from 42 Division I schools.

“A lot of the time, it’s luck of the draw, and the players I specifically hit were very good. [Fritz-Krockow], the girl that I lost to, played unbelievably well…. She probably could’ve beaten anyone that day.”

Freshman Cindy Chu and Pillinger both dropped their round of 128 match-ups in three, hard-fought sets. Pillinger, however, proceeded to make up for her disappointing loss in the tournament’s consolation bracket, where she captured first place.

“I was really proud of myself with the way I fought back and turned my whole outlook around,” Pillinger said. “I had 2 match points in first match, which was rough on my morale, but to come back, with my teammates and coaches being supportive, was good. Now I know to look at the bigger picture and treat it as another challenge to overcome.”

On the doubles side, the fourth-seeded team of Martire-Wang defeated George Mason’s Ballester-Sloper 8-0, Quinnipac’s Piazza-Pasternak 8-6, and UConn’s Adamski-Simcik 8-4 before dropping in the quarterfinals to host Virginia Tech’s own seventh-seeded duo of Kinard-Lam 8-6.

“They were definitely a strong team, and we tried to be as aggressive as we could. We normally get into our match-ups, and have fun playing while being intimidating as well,” Wang said. “The team [from Virginia Tech] played well, and we could have played better. You just have to give credit to them.”