The Notre Dame women’s tennis team has a lot to celebrate about 2024, starting with an 18-10 record on the season, its best finish since the 2016-2017 season.
One of the highlights of the team’s season was an upset win on April 12 over then-No. 21, ACC rival Duke. In Notre Dame’s first defeat of Duke since entering the ACC in 2014, the Irish got the win with two doubles wins (senior Julia Andreach and graduate student Page Freeman as No. 1 and senior Yashna Yellayi and junior Nibi Ghosh as No. 2). Andreach, Yellayi and sophomore Bojana Pozder also took wins in the singles competition to hand Duke a loss.
“That was certainly an exciting moment for our program and [an] exciting moment for our seniors. It was a great momentum [booster] into our ACC Tournament,” head coach Alison Silverio said.
It was a great win for Senior Day as the players graduating got to really show off their skills on the court.
“Obviously, [the seniors and underclassmen] are working so hard together every day on the court, in the weight room [and] in the classroom, and to see the love that they have for one another … and really staying united throughout this whole season has been has been so fun to watch and be a part of,” Silverio said.
The game at Duke was Notre Dame’s penultimate game of the regular season. After falling 5-2 to No. 3 North Carolina two days later, the team traveled to Cary, North Carolina, for the ACC Tournament. After defeating the No. 10 seed Syracuse 4-1, the Irish fell to No. 2 seed Virginia in the quarterfinals.
But that was not the end of the season. The Irish received an at-large bid into the NCAA Tournament and headed north to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the first round. This was the second year in a row the Irish went to Michigan after going five seasons without a postseason match. Xavier and Chicago State also traveled to Michigan to complete the regional four.
In their first-round matchup, the Irish came back to beat Xavier 4-3 after an early struggle in the doubles competition. Ghosh, Freeman, Pozder and Andreach all came out victorious in singles, with Andreach getting her 20th win of the season as the 23rd-ranked singles player in the country.
Then, Notre Dame came up against Michigan, and that was the end of the season. In this tournament game, the Irish performed strongest in doubles. The team of junior Carrie Beckman and Andreach upset the ninth-best pair in the nation. Yellayi and Ghosh took their set as well to give Notre Dame a lead early. But it wasn’t enough. The Wolverines came back to win.
While the Michigan match marked the end of the season for the team, Andreach was invited to play in the NCAA Women’s Singles Tournament at the end of the month in Oklahoma. Last year, Freeman qualified, but it was six years before that since the last Notre Dame player was invited.
Silverio is proud of the on-court accomplishments of the team but is so grateful for everything Andreach, Yellayi and Freeman did for the program.
“They will be leaving the program in a much better place than when they first started. So I'm so proud of how they have transformed and worked so hard to propel this program forward into a program that's nationally recognized every year. [I’m] just very proud of the legacy that those three individuals will be leaving behind and … excited for our junior class that will be entering their senior season next year. [The juniors will be] taking the reins and pulling the incoming freshmen along with them. So we're very excited to see where the program is going,” Silverio said.
