Boston, MA — Brown (B Division), Colgate (E Division), and New York University (Emerging Teams) have won their divisions at the 2102 Women’s National Team Championships.
The Howe Cup (A Division) finals and Walker Cup (C Division) finals are scheduled for later this afternoon.
Kurtz Cup (B Division): The Williams-Brown Kurtz Cup final was close out of the gate. In the first round, Caroline Sawin won in four for Williams at #6. The other two first-round matches both went to five games, and the two teams split the results: Laura Henry won at #3 for the Ephs, and Kathryn Yates won at #9 for the Bears. With Williams leading 2-1 going into the second round, Alli Rubin picked up another win for the Ephs at #2. The Bears’ Katherine Elliot-Moskwa won in five at #5, and Sarah Beresford won in four at #8 to bring Brown even with Williams going into the third round.
On the glass court, Williams’ Courtney Bogle put the Ephs ahead with a 3-0 win at #1. Brown was down 4-3 and would need to win the last two matches on court. At #4, Brown’s Mina Shakarshy, a first-year player, came back from 0-2 to win the third, and she pulled out a 12-10 win in the fourth to force a fifth game. She won 11-5 in the fifth, tying up the overall match score.
The match came down to the #7 contest between Williams’ Hannah Kaemmer and Brown’s Erika Kohnen. Kaemmer won the first game 11-7, but the Bears’ senior captain came back to win the second and third games. Kaemmer, however, wasn’t done; she won a competitive fourth game 11-8. The entire match came down to the fifth game, and Kaemmer and Kohnen were neck-and-neck throughout, pushing the game into tie-breakers. Kohnen finally pulled away to win the game 13-11 and was immediately surrounded by her joyous teammates. The final match score was Brown 5, Williams 4.
E Division: The E Division final between Colgate and Johns Hopkins got off to an exciting start thanks to an extremely close five-game match between Colgate’s Elizabeth Widing and Hopkins’ Allison Bellows. The final game went to tie-breakers, and Bellows edged out Widing to give Hopkins the win. Bellows and Widing set the tone for court 1: the next match, which was between Colgate’s Courtney Burke and Hopkins’ Dorothy Kim, started off with a 17-15 game that went to Burke. The two players took the match to five games, with Burke winning 11-6 in the fifth. Colgate clinched the overall match early, but many of the individual matches were quite competitive, going into extra points or past three games. Other players to win for Colgate were Tara Corey at #2, Emily Miller at #3, Hanna Atwood at #7, Carissa Blossom at #8, and Rosario Gallagher at #9. Hopkins’ captain Sasha Guttentag won at #1 for the Blue Jays, as did Casey Macguire at #4. The final match score was Colgate 6, Johns Hopkins 3.
Emerging Teams Division: NYU has set the standard for play in the Emerging Teams Division throughout the weekend. NYU swept Washing University in St. Louis in their first match and followed that win up with a 6-0 victory over Minnesota. This morning NYU faced Cal Berkeley, who had a win over Minnesota but a loss to Wash U. NYU rounded out their tournament with a 6-0 win over Cal. Susan Lin (#1), Yuxin Liu (#2), Katherine Bouton (#3), Morgan Pearce (#4), and Sunny Park (#6) all won their matches in three games. At #5, NYU’s Genevieve Tang and Cal’s Kimberly Lin battled back and forth, with Tang taking the win in four games: 11-3, 10-12, 13-11, 11-6. Cal, Wash U, and Minnesota all won one match apiece in the round robin, but Cal won the most individual games and so finished second in the division.
