Still basking in the glow of last Sunday’s impressive win against Wesleyan, the Amherst women’s tennis team continued its recent run of strong conference play in a 6-3 victory over Tufts.

After last weekend’s mixed bag of results on the doubles courts, the purple and white recaptured their edge, taking a 2-1 lead into singles action after winning on the second and third doubles courts. While Amherst fell to Tufts’ number one doubles pairing 8-4, the second court tandem of Vickie Ip ’18 and Kelsey Chen ’19 easily handled their opponents en route to an 8-5 victory.

Their win knotted the overall match at 1-1, leaving the number three doubles pairing of Rebecca Pol ’16 and Avery Wagman ’18 to determine which side would hold the advantage heading into singles play. The situation looked grim for the purple and white for much of the match, with Pol and Wagman dropping an early break to a Jumbos pairing that was locked in.

Facing such pressure, Wagman and Pol drew on the spirit that had brought them seven straight doubles victories to break Tufts not once but twice in a row. Tufts refused to go down so easily, managing to break Pol and Wagman one final time and forcing a tie-breaker before the purple and white pulled away, winning 7-3 in the tie breaker and 9-8 overall.

The high intensity of the doubles actions carried through to singles play, which saw four of the six matches go to a decisive third set. While the first and third courts proved to be troublesome for Amherst, with Suhasini Ghosh ’16 and Jackie Calla ’17E losing in hard-fought matches, victories on the remaining four courts saw the purple and white pull away from the Jumbos. However, only Chen managed to pull out a two set victory (6-4, 6-2) on the fifth court, while Ip, Sarah Monteagudo ’16 and Wagman all needed the full three sets to take care of their opponents.

“We had to move the matches indoor to Mount Holyoke because of the darkness,” Megan Adamo ’16 said. “But everyone recovered well and we clinced the matches we needed.”

Amherst’s victory, coupled with Williams’ recent loss to Bowdoin, keeps alive the purple and white’s chance of a regular season NESCAC crown, with their record standing at 5-1 in conference play and 11-5 overall heading into the final regular season match of the year.

On Saturday, April 30, Amherst will face Middlebury at 1 p.m. on the Amherst tennis courts, a match which doubles as the team’s senior day.