Tennis Clinches Spot at Midwestern Regionals
BY IAN HAYNES

The Oberlin College women’s tennis team will be making the trip to the Midwest Regional Tournament for the second year in a row. They assured themselves a spot in Wisconsin this past weekend at the Great Lake College Association Championships by beating Kalamazoo College on Friday and Hope College on Saturday.

(photo by Areca Treon)

The first match of the tournament for the Yeowomen was against Albion College. The two teams faced each other earlier in the season with Oberlin coming out on top, but this time it was the other way around. Oberlin fell 8-1 with the only point coming from junior Sarah Jesse playing first singles. Jesse won her match in straight sets 6-2, 6-3.
“You have days where you just have a bad day, but we played three good matches after that,” Coach Don Hunsinger said.
In the second match of the day, Oberlin beat Kalamazoo College 7-2 for their first victory of the tournament.
The first doubles team of Jesse and sophomore Alaina Fotiu-Wojtowicz won 8-4 while the second doubles team of senior Beth Krupski and first year Becca Buurma took a point with an 8-6 victory. The third doubles team of sophomores Laura Koehn and Lindsay Butler fell 8-4.

The first match on Saturday paired the Yeowomen against a very solid DePauw team.
“We played the best match we have played as a team and doubles played the best they have all year and we lost to a good team. They had already beaten Kenyon and Denison,” Hunsinger said.
Oberlin and DePauw had agreed to play to decision instead of completing the whole match to conserve time. Playing to decision means playing until one side has enough points to win even if all matches aren’t over. The Yeowomen fell 5-2 with points coming from first doubles and first singles. Two matches did not finish. In second singles Fotiu-Wojtowicz had won the first set and was up in the second set before the match was called and Koehn playing fifth singles did not finish her match.
“We played our best match and our worst match of the year within 24 hours of each other,” Hunsinger said.
Oberlin’s last match at the GLCA’s was against host Hope College. Oberlin and Hope met earlier in the year with Oberlin winning 5-4. Once again Oberlin won by a score of 5-4. First and second doubles won points and Jesse playing first singles, Fotiu-Wojtowicz in second singles and Buurma playing fourth singles won points for the Yeowomen in the win.
Buurma’s match at fourth singles could have been the decisive point for the Yeowomen. She took the first set 6-1, fell in the second set 4-6 but came back to win the match by taking the third set 6-4 in the epic two and a half hour match.
“It was an insane match,” Buurma said, “Whoever could control the wind was going to win the match.”
Hunsinger concurred, saying “I had never seen a tennis match played with wind gusts that strong.”
The solid showing after the Albion match assured Oberlin that they would once again be making the trip to the Midwest Regionals.
“I was happy with the whole team mentality after the Albion match,” Jesse said, “It is so easy to stay in a rut after a loss like that, but we came back strong in the next couple of matches.”
This past Wednesday, the Yeowomen took on Wooster at home in a North Coast Athletic Conference match. Oberlin bumped their record to 10-4 with the 7-2 win and stayed undefeated in conference play at 3-0.
The women’s tennis team left yesterday for Wisconsin and the Midwest Regional Tournament.
This past weekend the men’s tennis team traveled to Wabash College for the men’s GLCA championships. The Yeomen had a rough tournament losing all three matches. They lost to a solid Kalamazoo team 7-0, lost to Hope 5-0, and lost to Albion who they beat earlier this year 6-1.
In the Albion match, first-year first singles player Jamie Frankel did not play due to an injury, forcing everyone else to move up a spot. Senior Ben Fox, playing first singles, lost in three sets 7-5, 1-6, 2-6. The only point for Oberlin came in second singles as senior Mike Shelton came back from a 0-6 loss in the first set to win the second and third sets 6-0, 6-2 for the win.
The Yeomen took on Wooster in NCAC competition yesterday. Scores were unavailable at press time.