Last week, Syracuse was battling its opponent until the bitter end. This time, the Orange did not want to wait that long for the victory.

With an emphatic smash from Chelsea Jones, the Syracuse tennis team secured a 4-3 victory over Cornell at Drumlins Tennis Center Friday for SU’s eighth win of the season. The Orange lost to Rutgers, 5-2, Sunday in Piscataway, N.J., for its first conference loss of the season.

Against the Big Red Friday, Syracuse stormed out a quick 3-0 lead and swept all three doubles matches for the seventh time this season. SU has won the doubles point in eight of its 10 matches.

The junior tandem of Jones and Ashley Spicer climbed out of a 4-1 hole to win 8-5 Friday. The two juniors spearheaded the Orange attack, pacing the team with victories in their respective singles matches.

‘I told Spicer, ‘There’s no way we’re losing this match,” Jones said. ‘We just have to put the ball on the court and we’ll win.’

After a narrow loss to Iowa State last Sunday, the Orange looked to erase the memory of that match with every hit against Cornell. Syracuse never let the match go down to the wire, clinching the win well before the final singles match ended.

‘It felt good to clinch this match,’ Jones said. ‘I haven’t been in that position yet this year, so it felt good to win it for the team.’

On Friday, Syracuse continued its strong doubles play, which has enabled the Orange to run away with some matches this season and kept the team in position to win close contests. Even after letting Cornell hang around to try to mount a comeback in doubles, freshman Emily Harman put the exclamation point on the match with two aces.

‘Doubles was outstanding,’ head coach Luke Jensen said. ‘We’re really turning a corner and looking sharp there. It’s honestly like an avalanche. This team keeps showing us more and more of what they’re all about.’

Harman, like Spicer and Jones, carried that momentum into her singles match.

‘Confidence-wise it was great, because we were coming off a really tough loss against Iowa State,’ Harman said of winning both her doubles and singles matches.

But the 4-3 score did not give a true indication of the pace of the match as SU had the match well in hand. Spicer, for instance, dominated her singles match from the first serve, putting her foot on the gas and never letting up.

Jensen said the team’s victory Friday to an intense week of practice where every player was focused and prepared attributes the team lacked last week before their first loss of the season.

‘I was saying all throughout this week in practice, ‘I’m not losing this weekend,” Spicer said. ‘Especially this match, we lost to them last year 4-3 in a tough match. I was going to win.’

The Orange’s play, though, was far from perfect Friday. Syracuse dropped three of six singles matches to the Big Red, though the trio of Jones, Spicer and Harman had already wrapped up the victory for SU before the three losses.

‘The competition is so very close and sometimes the scores are misleading,’ Jensen said. ‘You win a couple of key points here and there and it turns the tide of momentum.’

Against Rutgers on Sunday, Syracuse only won two singles matches and one doubles contest. Christina Tan and Alessondra Parra won singles matches, while Jones and Spicer picked up another victory in doubles. The loss snapped Syracuse’s four-match winning streak and handed the Orange its first conference loss.

But Syracuse still found a way to get into the win column with Friday’s dominating performance. After last week’s loss to Iowa State, the atmosphere at Drumlins was somber on, as the team was swept up in the disappointment of a heartbreaking loss. This time, there was nothing but celebration on Friday night.

‘We just ride so much emotional power when we play that it lifts us,’ Jensen said. ‘The bottom line is we pulled out a victory and we move forward.’

azmeola@syr.edu

Published on March 1, 2009 at 12:00 pm