Boston, MA — The first day of the Women’s National Team Championships (Howe Cup) is over.
Howe Cup (A Division): The A Division semifinals will feature Harvard versus Trinity and Yale versus Princeton. During the regular season, Harvard defeated Trinity in Hartford by a score of 8-1. Yale traveled to New Jersey for the Bulldogs’ and Tigers’ regular season match in early February. Yale won that match 7-2.
Kurtz Cup (B Division): All of the matches in the B Division were determined by fairly wide margins, in terms of the overall scores. The closest overall match score was Bates’ 7-2 win over Hamilton. Two of the matches went to five games: Samantha Matos’ win for Bates at #4, which came down to a 13-11 final game; and Isabelle Weisman’s win for Hamilton at #7 over Alison Bragg. Bragg forced a fifth game with an 18-16 win in the fourth, but Weisman prevailed 11-6 in the fifth.
Brown defeated Mount Holyoke 8-1 with some games going into extra points but no matches going beyond three games. Middlebury beat F&M 9-0. Middlebury’s Abigail Jenkins and F&M’s Roxana Mead went to four games, with Jenkins taking the win. Kathryn Bostwick (Middlebury) and Erin Golueke (F&M) had one of the closest matches of the day: 11-7, 11-9, 6-11, 10-12, 11-7, with Bostwick battling back to win in the fifth.
In the semifinals, Brown will play Bates and Middlebury will play Williams. Bates and Brown last faced each other in November, and the Bobcats won 7-2. Middlebury and Williams are tied 1-1 in their regular season series; the Ephs won 5-4 in January and the Panthers won 5-4 in early February.
Walker Cup (C Division): The final match in the C Division was lopsided. Amherst, the second seed in the division, swept Tufts 9-0. The Jeffs held all of the individual matches to three games.
Three of the four matches in the opening round of the Walker Cup were decided 9-0: Bowdoin’s win over Wellesley, GW’s win over Conn, and Amherst’s win over Tufts. Wesleyan’s 6-3 victory over Colby was the closest match in the division today.
Amherst will play GW in the semifinals, and it will be the first meeting of the two teams this season. The other semifinal will feature Wesleyan and Bowdoin, and the two squads have already played twice this season. Their first meeting, in November, was extremely close, with Bowdoin taking the 5-4 win. In January, Bowdoin widened the gap between the two teams and beat the Cardinals 8-1.
Epps Cup (D Division): The Epps Cup matches all took place in the morning. Smith and Vassar advanced to one semifinal, and William Smith and St. Lawrence advanced to the other. St. Lawrence swept William Smith in November. Smith and Vassar have already played three times this season, and each time the results have been different. Smith lost to Vassar 3-6 in their season opener in November, but they defeated the Brewers 7-2 in January. The two teams’ last meeting, which was in early February, came down to a single match, and Smith won 5-4.
E Division: This year’s E Division is being played as two round robins with a play-off. Johns Hopkins, Drexel, and Vanderbilt are competing in one round robin, and Colgate, Rochester, and Northeastern are playing in the other. This evening featured match-ups between Vanderbilt and Hopkins and between Colgate and Rochester. Colgate quickly dispatched Rochester 9-0, and Hopkins defeated Vanderbilt 8-1. The #1 match between Maggie Bouscaren of Vanderbilt and Alexandra Guttentag of Hopkins was one of the best matches of the night; Bouscaren prevailed in four games to post the Commodores’ lone win.
Emerging Teams Division: The Emerging Teams round robin this year features two teams making their debuts at the Women’s National Team Championships: Minnesota and Washington University in St. Louis. Minnesota faced Cal in their first match, and they won two individual matches. However, the Bears took the overall match 4-2. WashU didn’t fare as well against NYU, falling 4-0, but there were some competitive rallies between the two teams. Tomorrow WashU plays Cal, and Minnesota will face NYU.
