Women's Tennis Cruises Past Coe, 7-2

Greta Koch

Posted: Mar 08, 2016

ORLANDO, Fla. – The Haverford College women's tennis team continued its winning ways on Tuesday with a 7-2 victory over Coe College during the team's trip to the Sunshine State over spring break. The Fords (2-0) got the early jump by sweeping the three doubles matches and never looked back in their victory over the No. 13 team from the Central Region.

Against the regionally-ranked opposition, Haverford switched some of the doubles pairings but experienced the same success in its first-ever win against Coe College. The Fords and Kohawks previously met during spring break trips in 2006 and 2009.

The one doubles team that did remain the same was the No. 1 pairing of Greta Koch and Robyn Himelstein. Together, the Fords' top pairing was an 8-5 winner. At No. 2 doubles, captains Abby Payson and Jessica Liu combined for an 8-3 victory. Sophomores Jia-Ling Tuan and Courtney Ahmed won their match for the second consecutive day together. Playing at No. 3 on Tuesday, the Fords' duo rolled to an 8-1 victory to claim Haverford's first team point of the evening.

In addition to the team's success against Coe, Koch moved up to the No. 1 singles position and was able to secure a victory against Haley Resnick, the No. 22 singles player in the Central Region. Koch won both her sets by identical 6-3 scores.

Koch was joined by three others players who each recorded singles and doubles victories to lift the team to a perfect 2-0 start. Payson made her spring singles debut and showed no signs of the lay off as she cruised to a 6-2, 6-3 win at No. 4 singles.

Haverford also came through with a pair of hard-fought victories at Nos. 5 and 6. Both Liu and Ahmed prevailed in tiebreaks to claim the opening set of their respective matches. They also played to matching 6-4 victories for the straight set victories.

In its busiest day of the week, women's tennis will have a pair of matches on Wednesday. Action gets underway against Methodist at 11:30 a.m. After a break in the afternoon, the team will return to competition against Northwestern (Minn.) with a scheduled 7 p.m. start time.