This weekend, the RPI women’s tennis team will travel to Ithaca, N.Y., to compete in the New York State Tournament, an event to which only the top 16 teams are invited each year.
Last season, the Engineers finished eighth at the tournament, and the team’s coach, Carol Pillsworth, says that the team hopes to improve on that this year. Pillsworth noted that Vassar College has won the tournament several years in a row. And it will be the team to beat again this season.
The Engineers have thus far had a successful season, from the very beginning. In the team’s first action this year, RPI won the Rensselaer Invitational for the second consecutive year, winning eight of the nine flights en route to defeating St. John Fisher College and Hartwick College.
The Engineers’ record for the season stands at 5-2, including a pair of decisive 9-0 victories. At the Hall of Fame tournament in Newport, R.I., the team competed “strongly against Division I teams,” stated junior captain Andrea Dalton.
Dalton has won each of her last two matches in straight sets at fifth singles and contributed greatly to the team’s victory in the Rensselaer Invitational­—where she won both her singles flight as well as her doubles flight with junior Michelle Pelersi.
Among many bright spots for the team this season is freshman Jessica Sitzer, who has had an impact her first season on the team. Sitzer won with junior Kristen Weiss in their doubles flight in the RPI invitational posting a 2-0 record, and also won her singles match against a tough SUNY New Paltz team two weekends ago. Pillsworth says that Sitzer is a “hard worker on the court” who “gets the job done,” and that “she never gives up, fights to the end.”
The Engineers’ first doubles team, junior Progga Das and senior captain Erica Sherman, has also been impressive this season. Their performance is highlighted by an 8-1 victory over the first doubles team at Hamilton College, which Sherman noted is “always a tough school [the team has] trouble against.” They also won their doubles flight at the Rensselaer Invitational with victories of 10-3 and 10-2. Das and Sherman only have one loss this season, and Sherman said that “It was tough, 7-9” and the match “could have gone either way.”
Other achievements include two awards for Liberty League Performer of the Week for Das and one for Weiss. Sitzer has been named Rookie of the Week three times this season.
After all these accomplishments, the team now finds itself just days away from the New York State Tournament, an important contest to the team. Qualifying for the tournament was one of the team’s major goals for the season, according to Pillsworth. Dalton said that the team “for the whole season [works] to prepare for the state tournament.”
Das, sophomore Christine Roe, Sherman, Weiss, Dalton, and Sitzer will play singles for the Engineers at the tournament. RPI will also field doubles teams of Sherman and Das, Pelersi and Roe, and senior Charlotte Kaplan and Weiss.
