The Notre Dame tennis teams played their penultimate weekends of regular-season action between Friday and Saturday, delivering a combined record of 3-1. The women's squad traveled to No. 49 Syracuse and Boston College, earning victories of 5-2 and 6-1, respectively. With those results, the Notre Dame women extended their winning streak to three games, improving their season records to 15-7 overall and 6-5 within the ACC. This week marks the first time the Irish women's team has held a record above .500 in conference play since March 8, 2020, the final game before the 2019-20 season was canceled due to COVID-19.
The men's group nearly pulled off a sweep of its own, splitting the weekend on home court to reach 11-13 overall and 2-8 within ACC action. Notre Dame opened by snapping its seven-game losing streak in conference play, topping No. 60 Clemson 4-1 on Friday. The Irish then took No. 35 Georgia Tech to the brink before falling 4-3 on Sunday.
Irish women post first All-ACC weekend sweep of the season
The 33rd-ranked Notre Dame women's tennis team made a statement on the road, defeating two ACC opponents in a three-day stretch for the first time this year. The Irish began their unbeaten weekend with a highly competitive doubles point at No. 49 Syracuse on Friday. Although Notre Dame's 46th-ranked doubles team of senior Julia Andreach and graduate student Page Freeman fell to the Orange's 74th-ranked combination of Viktoriya Kanapatskaya and Miyuka Kimoto, the next two Irish pairings won their matches, earning the first point. In No. 3 doubles, junior Nibi Ghosh and senior Yashna Yellayi took Syracuse's Emilie Elde and Shiori Ito to a tiebreaker game and gutted out the win.
Notre Dame then came out with guns blazing in singles play, claiming each of the first three points to secure the overall victory. Andreach, the 30th-ranked singles player in the nation, delivered one of her best performances of the year in topping the 43rd-ranked Kimoto in two sets (6-0, 6-1) of No. 1 singles. Syracuse would claim two singles points late, but not before Freeman handled Elde (6-2, 7-5) to earn Notre Dame's fifth and clinching point.
Sunday took the Irish to Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts for a battle with Boston College, one which Notre Dame controlled from the first serve. The doubles point proved far less stressful for the visitors this time, with Andreach and Freeman winning 6-1 before sophomore Akari Matsuno and junior Carrie Beckman quickly clinched the opening point via a 6-3 victory.
Boston College briefly tied the Irish with a point in No. 2 singles, but the scoring would halt there for the Eagles. Notre Dame claimed two-set victories in No. 4, No. 3 and No. 6 singles to clinch the sweep at a 4-1 score. Matsuno and Andreach, the latter of whom defeated another top-100 opponent in No. 94 Maurice Aguiar, added sugar to the treat with close wins, finalizing the overall count at 6-1 in Notre Dame's favor.
After a happy flight home to South Bend, the Irish women will wrap up its regular season with matches against Duke and North Carolina this weekend at Eck Tennis Pavilion. The duel with No. 20 Duke will begin at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, while the showdown against No. 6 North Carolina will get underway at noon on Sunday.
Notre Dame men continue gauntlet with split at home
Since beginning conference play, the 54th-ranked Irish men's tennis team has not gone more than nine days without seeing a ranked opponent on the other side of the net. And while Notre Dame has pulled out home defeats of No. 61 Miami (FL) and No. 50 Northwestern, the losses have generally piled up with little to no breaks in sight. However, the Irish did anything but succumb to its schedule over the weekend, earning a takedown of No. 60 Clemson and nearly adding a second against No. 35 Georgia Tech.
Early on, the Clemson match felt much closer than its 4-1 final score. The Tigers offered a heavy challenge to the Irish in doubles play, dominating No. 3 doubles with a 6-1 win. Needing victories in No. 1 and No. 2 doubles to claim the doubles point, Notre Dame put its nose to the grindstone and found a way. Graduate student Nil Giraldez and freshman Chase Thompson edged out Stewart Aronson and Marko Mesarovic of Clemson by a 7-5 final score. Shortly after, in a ranked matchup, the 13th-ranked Irish duo of sophomore Sebastian Dominko and senior Jean-Marc Malkowski bested Clemson's 69th-ranked twosome of Noa Vukadin and Max Smith by the same count.
It didn't take long for Clemson to tie the score, though. Vukadin cruised past junior Jameson Corsillo in No. 4 doubles, keeping the pressure on Notre Dame. But the Irish answered in a flurry, claiming three consecutive matches to put the top-60 contest on ice. Dominko, the 46th-ranked singles player in the country, picked up a big win against 80th-ranked Wissam Abderrhman in No. 1 singles, giving Notre Dame an overall lead it wouldn't relinquish. Freshman Kyran Magimay and Thompson made similarly quick work of their opponents, securing Notre Dame's second ACC win of the season.
Two days later, the Irish had another ranked opponent in Georgia Tech on the ropes early. Notre Dame made quick work of the doubles point, with sophomore Evan Lee and junior Yu Zhang starting the scoring with their 6-2 win in No. 3 doubles.
Though Georgia Tech pulled back ahead 2-1 early on in singles action, Corsillo used a tiebreaker to knot the overall score back up in No. 4 singles. Zhang would even the ledger again at 3-3 in No. 6 singles, turning attention to the decisive No. 2 singles match between Giraldez and 104th-ranked Keshav Chopra of Georgia Tech. In a match that could have gone either way, Chopra twice won sets by two games or less to wrap up a Yellow Jacket victory.
Notre Dame's men's team now looks ahead to a tight turnaround before its final home match Wednesday against Louisville at 4 p.m. The Irish will then travel to Boston College and finish its regular season at 3 p.m. on Friday.
