ITHACA, N.Y. — Sophomore
Dylan Gelber reached the singles semifinals of the Ivy League Invitational Automatic Qualifier in New York, and three more Big Red players made the final four at the WVU October UTR in Morgantown, W.Va., as the Cornell women's tennis team wrapped up a split weekend Sunday.
Gelber retired from her semifinal against Columbia's Emily Baek after winning the first set, 6-3, at Columbia's Philip and Cheryl Milstein Family Tennis Center. Baek will face fourth-seeded Gayathri Krishnan in an all-Columbia final. Krishnan upset top-seeded Erin Ha of Yale, 5-7, 6-2, 6-3, in the other semifinal. The winner earns the Ivy League's automatic bid to the ITA Conference Masters Championships, Nov. 5-8 in Rome, Ga.
Gelber went 3-1 in singles over the weekend and made the deepest run of any Big Red player in New York. All three of her wins came in straight sets. She opened Friday by dropping just three games against Columbia's Amber Yin, then beat Penn's Jo-Leen Saw, 6-4, 7-5. On Saturday, the Montreal native upset second-seeded Michela Moore of Dartmouth, 7-6 (5), 6-2, to reach the semifinals.
In Morgantown, the Big Red went 11-4 in singles. Top-seeded freshman
Chloe Fouhety reached the semifinals without dropping a set, losing just six games in wins over Duquesne's Naomi Lalonde, 6-1, 6-0, and West Virginia's Daniela Gonzalez, 6-1, 6-4. Fourth-seeded senior
Victoria Zhao also reached the semifinals, winning four straight 6-3 sets against Jana Bozinovska of Duquesne and Kamila Aripova. Zhao and Fouhety did not play their semifinal match.
Third-seeded freshman
Tanika Saravanan was Cornell's third semifinalist. She beat Duquesne's Sofia Serrano, 6-4, 6-1, and sixth-seeded Dasha Chichkina, also of Duquesne, 7-5, 6-0.
West Virginia's Rio Maeda handed Cornell three of its four losses in Morgantown. She beat fifth-seeded junior
Andrea Martinez De Los Rios, 6-1, 6-2, in the quarterfinals and Saravanan, 7-5, 6-2, in the semifinals. On Sunday she rallied past Zhao, 3-6, 7-5, 10-4.
Martinez De Los Rios went 3-1, winning two additional matches following her quarterfinal loss. After a round-of-32 loss Friday, senior
Martina Marica won twice in match tiebreaks to finish 2-1 on the weekend. Her last win was a come-from-behind 6-7 (3), 6-1, 10-6 victory over Duquesne's Mila Badics on Sunday.
The Big Red's next scheduled events are the ITA Sectional Championships, hosted by Penn in Philadelphia, beginning Thursday, Nov. 5, and the UB Indoor Invite in Buffalo, N.Y., beginning Friday, Nov. 6.
