Boston College
Brown Invitational
Women's Tennis Excels at Brown Invitational
September 26, 2011 | Women's Tennis
Sept. 26, 2011
In the first tournament of the season, the Eagles went 19-5 in singles action, advancing six players to the finals out of seven flights, and took second place in doubles action.
Junoir Alex Kelleher won the top flight, going 3-0, and defeating three regionally ranked players. She defeated Brown’s Misia Krasowski, 6-3, 4-6, 6-1, on Sunday to take first place in the Brown Bears Draw. To reach the finals, the Worcester, Mass., native defeated Princeton’s Hilary Bartlett, 7-5, 2-6, 1-0(4), in the semifinals and Brown’s Casey Herzberg in straight sets (6-4, 6-0) in the quarterfinals.
The three BC newcomers also took home first-place finishes. Freshman Jessica Wacnik tallied a first-place finish in the Dartmouth Big Green Draw, as she defeated Boston University’s Jessi Linero, 6-3, 6-4. Classmate Sarah Dalton defeated Joan Cannon of Princeton, 6-3 in both sets, to win the Princeton Draw. Junior Kelly Barry, who transferred to BC from Marquette University, defeated Katie Goepel also from Princeton, 6-1, 6-0, to take her flight.
Three Eagles came away with winning records, tallying a 2-1 total on the weekend. Junior Olga Khmylev lost in the finals of her flight to Princeton’s Lindsay Graff, 6-2, 7-6(6), but recorded wins against Brown’s Sarah Kandath (6-1, 6-3) and Dartmouth’s Akiko Okuda (6-3, 3-6, 1-0(8)). Senior Erina Kikuchi took third place in her flight with a win over Binghamton’s Marina Bykovskaya, 6-1, 6-3. She also tallied a two-set victory in the quarterfinals. Junior Ina Kauppila fell to Katherine Flanigan of Princeton, 7-5, 6-2, in the finals of the BC Eagles Draw, taking second, but collected wins over BU’s Kendal Drake (6-1, 6-2) and Binghamton’s Emma Leibowicz (7-6(2), 6-1).
Senior Katarina Gajic, ranked 84th nationally in the ITA preseason poll, earned a fourth-place finish in the Brown Bears Draw, falling to Bartlett, 6-4, 6-3, on the final day.
The Eagles lost to Princeton in the first-place doubles match, 3-1, on Saturday. Kikuchi and Wacnik earned BCs’s lone win, defeating Princeton’s Chow/Cannon pair, 8-3. The two teams also faced off in the quarterfinal round, in which BC won, as the pairings Wacnik/Kikuchi and Gajic/Barry won, 8-2 and 8-6, respectively.
Gajic travels to the Riviera/ITA All-American on October 1 in Pacific Palisades, Calif., while the whole team returns to action on October 8 for the USTA Invitational in Flushing Meadows, N.Y.
