Well. 4 women’s tennis celebrates Senior Day with an 8-1 win over No. 26 Colby

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. Playing a home match outdoors for the first time this season, the No. 4 Wesleyan women’s tennis team showed plenty of fight in an 8-1 win on the 26th Colby Senior Day Sunday at the John Wood Memorial Tennis Courts. Wesleyan (11-1, 6-1 NESCAC) has gone undefeated at home since 2019, while the Mules (3-6, 0-3 NESCAC) are just 1-6 on the road this season.

The doubles portion of this match went the way of the Cardinals in the early going, as an 8-4 winning pair gave Wesleyan the edge going into singles. Caitlyn Ferrante ’23 and Nika Vesley ’25 together at No. 2 defeated Madeline Omicioli and Isabella Suk at the same time Sarah Youngberg ’26 and Renna Mohsen-Breen ’25 defeated Amelie Gal and Ellie Gershaw at No. 3. The No. 1 match went to a tiebreak, with Samantha Riordan and Sydney Landau coming out on top Christina Yu ’22 and Sasha Gaeth ’23 8-7 (7-5).

In singles, Colby struck first and the Mules won the first set on three courts, while Riordan defeated Vesely in his match at No. 1. However, the Cardinals showed great determination and bounced back in a big way to win all six singles courts.

Ferrante took care of things with a dominant 6-1, 6-2 win over Gershaw in the 3rd. Serim Jin ’23 shined with a Senior Day win over Suki 6-2, 6-2, putting the Cardinals within one win of the match.

After falling 6-2 in the opening sets, Katie Fleischmann ’23 won the match for Wesleyan at No. 6 2-6, 6-1, 6-0. That momentum seemed to reverberate throughout the courts as Vesely stormed back to win the first set in a tiebreak 7-6 (7-3) before taking the match against Riordan with a 6-1 second-set win.

Yu fell behind Omicioli early, but won the second and third sets to win at No. 4 (2-6, 6-3, 6-2). Finally, Leila Epstein ’26 was locked in a battle with Landau at No. 2 when Epstein lost the first set 7-5 only to regroup and win 6-2, 7-5 in the remaining two sets to defeat the Cardinals on all six singles courts.

The Cardinals return to the road next weekend to face Bates on Saturday.