Cornell Winter Invitational Draws (PDF)

ITHACA, N.Y. — With Ivy League play just a couple months away, both tennis teams will be in action this weekend. The men's team will travel to George Washington for its second dual match of the season, while the women's team emerges from its winter hiatus by hosting the three-team Cornell Winter Invitational. Both teams return the bulk of their squads after carrying no seniors on their rosters last year.
 
The Big Red women will be joined by Army and Seton Hall for the three-day event this weekend at Reis Tennis Center, which will commence at 3 p.m. Friday with singles play to be followed by the first round of doubles. There will be A and B brackets in both singles and doubles, with the draws available here.
 
Cornell enjoyed a strong preparatory fall season with freshman Laila Judeh hitting the ground running with a team-best record of 9-3 in singles. She won the B bracket of the Cornell Fall Invitational, then advanced to the semifinals of the B bracket the following weekend at Penn's Cissie Leary Invitational.
 
Senior Christine Ordway was 8-3 in the fall and advanced into the Round of 16 at the USTA/ITA Northeast Regional in October. As a result, she was ranked 15th in the Northeast Region by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association earlier this month. Ordway has experience playing at the No. 1 spot, but is coming off a 2011-12 season in which she posted a 8-9 mark from No. 2 behind classmate Sarah O'Neil.
 
Voted an All-Ivy League Second Team selection, the team's most valuable player and most improved player, O'Neil was used exclusively from the No. 1 spot just one season after primarily appearing at the other end of the lineup. She won all three of her matches against ranked opponents, including a pair of victories over Princeton's Hilary Bartlett.
 
O'Neil and now-sophomore Lauren Frazier made program history last season by becoming the first Big Red doubles team to ever earn All-Ivy First Team accolades. The duo rolled to a 5-2 record in Ivy League play, including a pair of victories over national top-50 pairings from Penn and Princeton in the final weekend. O'Neil and Frazier finished the season ranked third in the Northeast Region and went 7-4 in tournament play this fall. The duo of Rosemary Li and Sara Perelman, now both sophomores, were 10-2 in matches last season.
 
Junior Ryann Young is coming off a spectacular 2011-12 season in which she posted a team-high 13 victories paired with just five losses from primarily the No. 3 spot in the order. The Big Red went 9-10 in dual matches and 1-6 in Ivy League play in Mike Stevens' second year as the Carl H. Meinig '31 Head Coach of Women's Tennis.
 
The Cornell men's squad has already played one dual match this month, defeating Penn State, 4-3, on the road last weekend. Silviu Tanasoiu returns for his second year as the Director of Intercollgiate Tennis and the Savitt-Weiss Head Coach of Men's Tennis.
 
Cornell is ranked 70th in the country by the ITA, which released its first rankings of the season on Jan. 3. Sophomore Sam Fleck, an All-Ivy League Second Team selection during his debut campaign, posted a 6-4 mark in fall singles matches and holds down the ITA's No. 15 ranking in the Northeast Region.
 
Fleck also teams with classmate Quoc-Daniel Nguyen to form the fourth-ranked doubles team in the region after a spectacular 10-1 fall season, which included a 10-match winning streak, top flight titles at the Columbia Classic and Cornell Fall Invitational, and a run into the semifinals of the USTA/ITA Northeast Regional.
 
Freshman Dragos Dima posted a 5-3 record during the fall, garnering the No. 16 spot in the Northeast Region. Spencer Clark posted the team's best record in the fall, going 11-4 with a 10-match winning streak that included titles in the C Bracket of the Columbia Classic and the White Bracket of the Cornell Fall Invitational.
 
The Big Red was 10-15 last season with one of the youngest lineups in the country, frequently comprised of one sophomore and five freshmen. Cornell had a challenging non-league schedule to boot, with 11 of its 15 losses coming against teams in the national rankings.
 
Tanasoiu's recruiting efforts have not gone unnoticed either, with Cornell's recruiting class for 2013 recently ranked 23rd in the country by the Tennis Recruiting Network.