SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. -- The Mount Holyoke College tennis team fielded five two-player teams and advanced one to the quarterfinal rounds to open the New England Women's Intercollegiate Tennis Tournament, co-hosted by Mount Holyoke and Smith from Friday to Sunday.
The tournament, one of the oldest and largest in women's Division III tennis, is played "Billie Jean King Cup" style, in which everyone is entered with a partner and each round of play is decided by winning at least two out of three matches -- two singles matches and one doubles match. The team that wins moves forward in the draw.
Playing in the tournament's C Draw, Mount Holyoke senior captain Shweta Kiran Cavale (Chennai, India) and first-year Cal Smith (Bridgewater, Mass.) teamed up to defeat Trinity College's Audrey Lee and Kennedy White 3-0. They won the doubles match 8-2, Smith defeated White 6-3, 6-2 in one singles match, and Kiran Cavale defeated Lee 5-7, 6-2, (10-8). The Lyons pair will face Shelby Henry and Olivia Berler of Endicott in the quarterfinals Saturday at 9am at Mount Holyoke.
Playing in the B Draw, Mount Holyoke's top doubles team of captain Annika Chai (London, England) and first-year Jaskirat Kaur (Mohali, India) lost in a first-round matchup against the fourth-seeded duo, Juliette Moschella and Mariana Campos of Babson. The Lyons will play in a consolation match at Smith College on Saturday.
Elsewhere in the C Draw, first-year duo Kate Vavra (Weston, Mass.) and Kennedy Bagley-Fortner (Montclair, N.J.) fell to the fourth-seeded Endicott team of Sam Hartmann, Mar Molina, and Katie Fitzgibbons.
Two more Mount Holyoke teams paired up in the D Draw, both falling by 2-1 scores. In the A Pool of the D Draw, the first-year team of Gautami Melekote (Ellington, Conn.) and Shanden Plyler (Norwood, N.C.) fell 2-1 to Emerson's Chase Stinson and Carlson Jones. Meanwhile in Pool B, sophomore Claudia Gonzalez-Vazquez (Cancun, Mexico) and sophomore Katherine Rha (Douglaston, N.Y.) were defeated 2-1 by Wheaton's Haylee Doiron and Elise Little-Gill.
The teams that did not win on Friday will still play in consolation-round matches on Saturday at either Smith or Mount Holyoke.
