US Open or Lions tennis?

In another edition of Weekend Sports Wrap, tennis titan Ross Chapman brings you the scoop on Columbia’s performance in the regional tournaments and other sporting news, like what our awesome field hockey team is doing. 

The Columbia men’s tennis team stamped their domination of the northeast into the record books this weekend. Six Lions reached the round of 16, four reached the quarterfinals, and three reached the semifinal round. And after Winston Lin defeated Dorydas Sakinis of Dartmouth in two sets in his semifinal match, CU guaranteed a Lion vs. Lion final match at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, home of the US Open in Flushing Meadows, NY.

Meanwhile, the women up in New Haven placed three players into the quarterfinals, marking the first time the women’s team has ever achieved the feat. While none of the three advanced to the semis, the women, like the men, also earned recognition for their doubles victories at the ITA Northeast Regional tournaments, with Kanika Vaidya and Rima Asatrian representing Columbia in the doubles finals.

While the current tennis information infrastructure still makes this information hard to find—Bwog had to first discover Lin’s semifinal victory through a Dartmouth Twitter account—we’ve figured just about everything out by now. Ashok Narayana (who defeated Mike Vermeer, another Lion, in the quarters) and Dragos Ignat faced each other in the semifinal on the other side of the bracket from Lin, and Narayana came away with a win. Max Schnur and Eric Rubin also made it into the round of 16 in the main draw. Narayana and Schnur participated in doubles competition, but fell in the semifinals. Basically, a record-breaking number of Lions are running around Flushing Meadows. Rima Asatrian, Tina Jiang, and Kanika Vaidya (first-year, sophomore, and junior respectively) were the women who appeared in the singles main draw in New Haven, while Asatrian and Vaidya teamed up to reach the finals of the doubles draw. They will battle a Yale team for the championship.

These huge performances put Columbia in great position as it heads to Orlando during our election day break for the ESPN/Florida State Invitational. The team should have no doubts that it can perform at the highest level, even after a sub-par performance at the ITA All-Americans two weeks ago. We’ll update this post once the Northeast Regionals have finished for good with the final podium results.

Edit (2:41 PM): Winston Lin defeated Ashok Narayana in the finals 7-6, 6-3 and earned an automatic bid to the USTA/ITA National Indoor Championships, and Rima Asatrian and Kanika Vaidya defeated Yale’s Hanna Yu and Ree Ree Li 6-2, 6-2 to claim the doubles title!

A host of sports traveled the country to perform this weekend:

• Field Hockey (10-4, 3-1 Ivy) took a pair of excruciatingly close comeback victories, featuring an overtime win over at Penn, 4-3, and a last-minute rally against Delaware to win, 2-1. With these two victories, the Lions have vaulted over Cornell in the Ivy polls and into the national #20 spot in the Field Hockey RPI rankings. Next home game: Sunday, October 26^th vs Dartmouth at 12 PM
  • Christina Freibott, the NCAA leader in assists per game at 1.36, earned her second Ivy League Player of the Week award and got a mention in Sports Illustrated

• Cross Country had trouble at the Wisconsin Adidas Invitational. No men or women turned in a top-40 finish, and the two teams finished 27^th of 36 and 28^th of 38, respectively. Next event: Saturday, November 1^st at the Ivy League Championships in Princeton, NJ

• Men’s Soccer (4-5-1, 1-1-1 Ivy) earned their first tie of the season, battling Princeton to a 1-1 tie. Both goals were scored in the first 15 minutes. The women (6-2-5, 2-1-1 Ivy) shut out the Tigers just three hours later to continue their season-long undefeated streak at home and take a win, 1-0. Next home games: Saturday, October 25^th Dartmouth at 4 PM (women) and at 7 PM (men)

• In rowing action, the men’s lightweight team captured fifth out of 22 in the championships fours competition, their best finish of the day at the Head of the Charles in Boston. The women’s eights struggled there; the youth of the Columbia teams and a pile-up underneath a bridge led to official results of 31^st and 33^rd of the 34 crews. Next event: The lightweights are done for the season, while the women are at the Princeton Chase on Sunday, October 26th

• Volleyball (7-9, 3-4 Ivy) lost both of its matches this weekend. The loss at Brown is the second in a row after a 10-game win streak the Lions used to own over the Bears. In New Haven, Yale extended its streak over Columbia to 26 straight. The Lions have not been swept in a month, and look to even out their Ivy record on Saturday in Ithaca, NY. Next home game: Friday, October 31^st vs. Princeton at 7 PM

• The Women’s Golf team defeated Princeton, Penn, Dartmouth, and Brown en route to a third-place finish at the Princeton Invitational, led by first-year Nancy Wu’s seventh-place performance. The men went off to Bryan, Texas earlier in the week and also took third (out of 13), highlighted by a 15-stroke improvement between the two rounds. Next event: Both teams have ended their competitive fall seasons, but will appear for an alumni outing this Friday, October 24^th at Tuxedo Park, NY

Hopefully the size of our homecoming crowd via David Boswell