SCHENECTADY, N.Y. – The #42 Union College women's tennis team has qualified for the Liberty League Tournament for the fourth straight season and will begin postseason play for the third year in a row with a first-round matchup against #36 St. Lawrence University on Friday at 8:30 a.m. at Cornell University's Reis Tennis Center.
THE BRACKET: #42 Union (12-6, 5-3 Liberty League) is seeded fourth in this year's tournament, while #36 St. Lawrence (16-4, 4-4 Liberty League) earned the fifth seed during the regular season. Third-seeded #25 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (11-3, 7-1 Liberty League) and sixth-seeded Ithaca College (6-11, 2-6 Liberty League) will battle in the other first-round matchup. Top-seeded #34 Skidmore College (9-9, 7-1 Liberty League) and second-seeded #28 Vassar College (12-5, 7-1 Liberty League) received byes into the semifinals.
POSTSEASON HISTORY: The Union women are in the postseason for the fourth time since the start of tournament qualification in 2015. Union is 13-35 all-time in Liberty League Tournament play since 1995, with five main-draw wins to its credit – last year's first-round win over St. Lawrence was the first for the team since 2003. The conference stopped employing a back draw at the event in 2011.
ALL-TIME VS. ST. LAWRENCE: Friday's match will be the 40th all-time meeting on the courts between the two schools, with St. Lawrence holding a 27-12 edge in the first 39. The Saints won 19 matches in a row between 2002 and 2020 to skew the stats, but Union has triumphed in four of the last seven meetings. The teams have met 10 times in the Liberty League Tournament, with the Saints winning six matches to the Garnet Chargers' four.
LAST TIME VS. ST. LAWRENCE: Union will look to change the pattern that has emerged over the last two seasons, which has seen the regular-season winner of Union and St. Lawrence lose the postseason rematch. Union cruised to a 6-1 win over a shorthanded St. Lawrence squad on April 12 in Canton, losing all three doubles matches but coming back to sweep all six singles contests against the then-#25 Saints. Five of the six singles matches were won in straight sets, with juniors
Skylar Semon and
Sydney Alphabet and first-year
Calista Finkelstein all losing no more than five games.
CONFERENCE HONORS: The Garnet Chargers have earned four weekly awards from the Liberty League this season. Junior
Chara Meidani was named the Singles Performer of the Week in September and first-years
Samantha Jacobs and
Calista Finkelstein have earned a combined three Rookie of the Week honors this season, with Jacobs earning recognition on two occasions.
A NEW HIGH: The Union women's team broke the program record for wins in a season for the second year in a row with the team's win over SUNY New Paltz on April 26. The Garnet Chargers have amassed the first two double-digit win seasons in program history over the last two years, and the team's 23 wins over two seasons are already seven more than the previous best two-year standard of 16. The team has clinched its first back-to-back-to-back winning seasons since 1998-2000, when the team finished off a string of 11 straight over-.500 campaigns.
NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED: After earning the first national ranking in program history last season, the Garnet Chargers have been nationally ranked in each of the last five weeks by the Intercollegiate Tennis Assocation in their Division III Women's Collegiate Tennis Rankings. The team broke into the rankings for the first time this year on April 2 and reached as high as #37 after its victory over then-#25 St. Lawrence. Five of the six teams competing in the Liberty League Tournament enter the postseason with national rankings to their credit.
FIRST-YEAR FORCES: First-years
Samantha Jacobs and
Calista Finkelstein are both in the midst of excellent rookie seasons for Union. Jacobs leads the team in singles winning percentage with a 17-8 record, while Finkelstein had a team-leading 10 dual-match singles wins and is 17-11 overall on the year. Their 17 singles wins are tied for fifth on the school single-season wins list and are also tied for the most by a first-year player in program history, matching the 17 of current sophomore
Luisa Arizpe-Sierra achieved last season. Finkelstein also has a team-leading 15 doubles wins on the season so far, and her 32 combined wins are third-most in a season ever at Union, behind only Lauren Stellato '04 with 33 in 2003-04 and Tal Pezzuco '20 with 37 in 2017-18.
SCOUTING THE SAINTS: St. Lawrence has also been nationally ranked for the last five weeks, reaching as high as #25 before their loss to Union. The Saints got off to the best start to a season in program history by winning their first 13 matches of the year and matched the program single-season wins mark of 16 with a win over William Smith last weekend. Angelica Aksdal-Jansen is 11-4 at the first-singles spot for the Saints and Yvette Karera has a team-leading 16 singles wins on the year while recently moving up to second singles to replace Molly Jespersen. Elisa Iuri boasts a team-best 16-5 doubles record on the year, mostly teaming with Aksdal-Jansen.
WHAT'S NEXT: Friday's winner will take on top-seeded Skidmore College in the Liberty League semifinals on Saturday at 8:30 a.m. in Ithaca.
