[Women's Tennis Championships Page]

Semifinal - [Lake Forest 5, Carroll 1]

Semifinal - [Grinnell 5, St. Norbert 3]

Final - [Grinnell 5, Lake Forest 0]

ROCKFORD, Ill. – For the fourth straight season and 12th time overall the Grinnell Pioneers earned a Midwest Conference Women’s Tennis Championship. The Pioneers earned a sweep of the doubles flight and picked up two more singles win to defeat Lake Forest 5-0 and earn a trip to the NCAA Tournament in the spring.

Grinnell earned a spot in the championship match by defeating St. Norbert in a close 5-3 contest at Boylan Tennis Center. The Green Knights earned a pair of doubles victories by the teams of Nancy Chybowski and Erika Chitko and Katherine Ake and Maggie Berens but Grinnell bounced right back during singles competition with four victories. Shirlene Luk (No. 1), Sadhana Athreya (No. 2), Hanna Feldman (No. 4), and Emma Macdonald (No. 5) all picked up singles victories in the semifinal contest for the Pioneers.

Lake Forest dispatched of Carroll 5-1 in its semifinal match to make the championship match an All-South Division affair. The Foresters captured a pair of doubles wins as Sarah Paulson and Christi Valicenti won in the No. 1 flight while Marisa Guggenheim and Aimee Fadden won in the No. 3 flight. Lake Forest then won all the finished matches in singles play with Valicenti (No. 2), Lexi Chionis (No. 4), and Guggenheim (No. 5) picking up victories.

In the championship match Grinnell won all three doubles matches. In the No. 1 flight Shirlene Luk and Virginia Purcell won 8-6 while the No. 2 flight of Sadhana Athreya and Emma Macdonld were triumphant by the score of 8-2. The No. 3 pair of Hanna Feldman and Julia Rumley picked up an 8-4 victory to make it a clean sweep before singles play.

In singles play Macdonald earned a victory for Grinnell in the No. 5 flight 7-6 (7-2), 6-2 while Rumley won in the No. 6 flight 6-3, 6-2 to wrap up the championship.

With the win the Pioneers earn the Midwest Conference automatic qualification to the 2014 NCAA Women’s Tennis Tournament which takes place May 19-24 at the Biszantz Family Tennis Center in Claremont, Calif.

The championship weekend continues on tomorrow when the teams will shift to Nielsen Tennis Center to compete in the doubles championship.

Grinnell Head Coach Andy Hamilton talks about the championship:



Grinnell seniors Sadhana Athreya abd Emma Macdonald talk about what it means to win another championship: