A week after opening NESCAC action with a resounding 9-0 win against Colby on their home court, the Amherst women’s tennis team maintained their strong start to the season with a pair of commanding victories against Brandeis and Babson in the annual Nor’Easter Bowl.

Amherst’s successful weekend started on April 1, when the sixth-ranked purple and white were pitted against the green and white of Babson. Although Babson entered the match ranked 28th in the country, they proved to be no match for the Amherst women, who dominated every aspect of the affair.

Amherst failed to lose a single set in any of the six singles matches, with Babson only managing to muster a paltry 12 games in all six matches. Especially noteworthy were the 6-0, 6-0 wins that Jackie Calla ’17E and Avery Wagman ’18 posted on the third and sixth singles courts, respectively.

The closest Babson came to stealing a single set, much less a match, was on the first singles court, on which captain Suhasini Ghosh ’16 took on Eleni Gianelos of Babson. Ghosh came out ahead in a tightly-contested first set, which ended up going to a tie-breaker, with a score of 7-4. Ghosh then swept Gianelos aside in the second set, 6-1, to ensure Amherst’s sweep of the singles courts.

The story on the doubles courts was much of the same, with Amherst in complete control on each of the courts. The first and second doubles pairings, Ghosh and Sarah Monteagudo ’16 and Vickie Ip ’18 and Kelsey Chen ’19, respectively, each pulled off impressive 8-1 victories. The purple and white clinched their victory with a resounding 8-0 victory on the third doubles court, by the pairing of Wagman and Rebecca Pol ’16.

Pol praised the entire team for its “patience and consistency which is something that [they] have been practicing every day.” She went on to laud the doubles pairing of Chen and Ip, neither of whom lost a single match, either in doubles or in singles play, all weekend. Pol noted how the two “have been doing an excellent job of pulling out tough matches.”

The Amherst women continued their impressive weekend on Saturday, day two of the Nor’Easter Bowl, with yet another comfortable victory over 31-ranked Brandeis. Yet again, Amherst swept the three doubles courts, with Calla and Maddy Sung ’19 replacing Pol and Wagman as the third doubles pairings. Even though Brandeis put up more of a fight then Babson, Amherst still came out ahead 8-4, 8-0 and 8-5 on the doubles courts.

The singles action also proved to be more challenging than on the previous day, with the purple and white dropping its lone match of the weekend in a hard-fought match on the number three singles court between Calla and Brandeis’s Keren Khromchenko.The two women needed a third set tie-breaker to settle the affair, with Khromchenko narrowly prevailing 6-4, 1-6 and 10-7. Amherst dominated the rest of the singles matches, not dropping a single set.

Following this weekends victories, Amherst remains 1-0 in NESCAC action and sits at 6-4 overall, ranked sixth in the nation. Next up for the purple and white are away matches at MIT this Saturday, April 9 and at conference foe Bowdoin on Sunday, April 10.