Yeowomen top MC

Team looks for a strong season

The women's tennis team won their first match of the year last Saturday against Malone College on Malone's Hall of Fame courts, down the road from the Football Hall of Fame.

The Yeowomen won 7-0 under the rules of Malone's conference, which scored each single and then gave one point to the winner of two out of three doubles. Oberlin cleaned up on singles, lost the first set of doubles, but then came back to win the last two.

Under North Coast Athletic Conference rules, the women would have won 8-1.

"We did really well for our first match," co-captain senior Bethany Pribila said. "We had three new players and their first college match was a good experience."

Pribila led off the singles, winning 6-3 and 6-2. Sophomore Leighann Totly and senior Erika Bradford had the next two with the only two tie-breakers of the match, winning 6-4, 6-7, 6-1 and 6-0, 1-6, 6-3 respectively.

Sophomore Tara Sievers crushed her opponent 6-2, 6-0, before junior Kate Petersen came out to thrash Malone's Merrellyn Bonar 6-2, 6-1. First-year Jill Brockelman finished off the singles, winning 6-1, 6-3.

Pribila and Totly lost the first doubles match 8-4, but the partnerships of Bradford and Sievers, Petersen and first-year Anne Greenberg won the next two, both scoring 8-5.

"I don't see any problems for us," Sievers said. "We have a strong lineup all the way down with no gaps."

The team has about 12 players, with three or four new players to replace the two who graduated and the two who left. The team's new players are sophomore Leighann Totly, and first-years Anne Greenberg and Jill Brockelman. Last year the team finished fourth in the NCAC. "We always end up in the top half of the conference," Pribila said. "We're aiming for second."

Pribila thought that Kenyon would probably be first. "They're ranked number two in the nation," she said.

The Yeowomen's next meet is at home against John Carroll University on Saturday at 1 p.m.