NEW YORK — Sophomore
Dylan Gelber won twice to reach the singles quarterfinals and the doubles team of senior
Michelle Ryndin and junior
Sage Loudon advanced to the quarterfinals Friday as the Cornell women's tennis team opened play at the Ivy League Invitational Automatic Qualifier at Columbia's Philip and Cheryl Milstein Family Tennis Center.
The field includes 32 singles players and 16 doubles teams from all eight Ivy League programs. The singles and doubles champions each earn the league's automatic bid to the ITA Conference Masters Championships, Nov. 5-8 at the Rome Tennis Center in Rome, Ga.
Gelber did not drop a set on Day One. She beat Columbia's Amber Yin, 6-2, 6-1, in the round of 32 and held off Penn's Jo-Leen Saw in the round of 16, 6-4, 7-5.
Loudon won the longest match of the day for Cornell. After dropping the first set to Penn's Emma Tomova, 6-3, Loudon took the second set in a 7-4 tiebreak and won the match tiebreak, 10-8. Later in the day she fell to Columbia's Elena Zhao, 6-3, 6-0, in the round of 16.
Ryndin, the fifth-seeded singles player, lost to Dartmouth's Josephine Lombardi, 7-5, 6-2, in the round of 32. Freshman
Athena Orzechowski fell to Columbia's fourth-seeded Gayathri Krishnan, 6-4, 6-1.
In doubles, Ryndin and Loudon, the third seeds, beat Brown's Sari Woo and Isabella Hu, 8-3, in the round of 16. Gelber and Orzechowski fell to Yale's Shyla Aggarwal and Ziye Liu, 8-2.
Gelber faces Dartmouth's second-seeded Michela Moore in the singles quarterfinals Saturday, and Ryndin and Loudon meet Yale's Erin Ha and Angela Chen in the doubles quarterfinals.
