Away Game Briefs
Women’s Tennis
This weekend marked the beginning of the spring season for the seventh-ranked Carnegie Mellon women’s tennis team. On Friday, the Tartans took on Slippery Rock University at their home indoor facility in Monroeville and won 8–1. The next day, Carnegie Mellon faced off against Division I opponent Duquesne University and fell 6–1.
Against Slippery Rock, the Tartans started off strong, taking all three doubles matches with sophomore Vanessa Pavia and first-year Stacy Chang teaming up for an 8–0 sweep in the third seed match. On the singles side, all five Carnegie Mellon wins came in straight sets with first-year Cori Sidell and Chang both winning 6–0, 6-0, meaning Chang did not lose a single game during her entire match.
The following day, the Tartans faced much stiffer competition in Duquesne, and it showed. Pavia and Chang again won their doubles match but required a tiebreaker to do so, leaving the end score at 9–7, and were the only Carnegie Mellon team to win their doubles match. In singles, most Tartans were able to put up a fight with three of the five losses requiring a third set and Sidell defeating her opponent for the lone single win, 6–4, 2–6, 6–3.
The Tartans next face off against St. Francis University on Friday evening.
Men’s Tennis
The ninth-ranked Carnegie Mellon men’s tennis team started their spring season against Duquesne on Saturday, ultimately failing to their Division I opponent 5–2.
The match started off rough with all three doubles teams failing quickly. Senior Bryce Beisswanger and junior Yuvraj Kumar put up the best fight, pulling the score all the way to 8-6 in their defeat. Singles play went better — Two Tartans gained points for Carnegie Mellon, with sophomore Kenny Zheng winning in three sets 6–4, 1–6, 1–0 (10–3) and fellow sophomore Kunal Wadwani putting up a dominant performance 6–1, 6–1.
The men will be the second half of a double header with the women on Friday in their match against St. Francis.
Track & Field
The Carnegie Mellon men’s and women’s track and field teams competed at the Bob Shannon Invitational hosted by Denison University on Saturday. Both teams finished second behind Ohio Wesleyan in the ten team meet with the men losing 129–115 while the women lost 193–93.
In the track events, the men started off strong with junior Jeffrey Chen setting a school record with his first place finish in the 60-meter run, finishing with a time of 7.06. Senior Thomas Vandenberg continued his strong season with another win in the 800-meter run with a time of 1:54.03, over 8 seconds faster than second place.
In the distance events, the Tartans kept up the winning ways with sophomore Owen Norley taking first in the mile run, crossing the line in a time of 4:26.16, and fellow sophomore Curtis Watro winning the 3000-meter run in 8:56.55. In the 5000-meter run, sophomore Gordon Pace took second out of team represented individuals with a time of 16:05.70.
On the women’s side, senior Sasha Spalding took home a second place finish in the 400-meter dash as she crossed the line at the 1:00.06 mark. Fellow senior Erin Kiekhaefer set the meet record during her win in the 800-meter run with her time of 2:21.20. In the mile run junior Priya Patel and sophomore Emily Joyce took second and third among affiliated runners with times of 5:51.95 and 5:52.70 respectively.
For the field events sophomore Rebecca Fortner took first in the high jump, clearing the 1.57 meter bar on her second attempt. In the pole vault, sophomore Grace Yee lost the tiebreaker for second place by taking all three attempts to clear the 3.05 meter bar against her opponent’s two attempts.
The Tartans will next compete on Valentine’s Day at the Tiffin Dragon Open at Tiffin University.