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Syracuse (4-1, 0-0 Atlantic Coast) suffered its first loss of the season, falling 5-2 to Columbia (6-1, 0-0 Ivy League) on the road. SU’s biggest victory came when it swept the three doubles matches, but even those were not easy.

Miyuka Kimoto and Emilie Elde took control of their match early on and beat Anna Zhang and Sophia Wang 6-3. The duo then got a front-row seat for the two other matches, both of which forced the schools to win seven games in the only set of the doubles round.

With the Orange facing a potential doubles loss for the first time all season, Younes Limam’s squad locked in and held off Columbia in both matches. Shiori Ito and Viktoryia Kanapatskaya outlasted Sophia Strugnell and Gayathri Krishnan 7-6. Similarly, Constance Leviver and Anastasia Sysoeva propelled themselves to a 7-5 victory over Winta Tewolde and Rachele Rimondini.

These matches tested the team’s perseverance and were a large step towards Limam’s goal of improving as a team in the doubles win column.

After narrowly escaping doubles with an early victory, it seemed Syracuse had caught fire heading into singles, but that wasn’t the case.

Kimoto managed to win a combined five games in her match, losing to Julia Haynes in straight sets 2-6 and 3-6. Haynes dealt Kimoto her first loss of the season. Although Kanapatskaya’s match was much closer than Kimoto’s, she lost in straight sets to Zhang 6-7, 4-6.

Elde got off to a slow start, losing the first set 1-6. During the second set, Elde found her rhythm and prevailed to win 7-5 to force a winner-take-all third set against Fatima Keita. After a thrilling second-set victory, Elde seemed to have momentum on her side, but Keita reclaimed her first-set magic early and never looked back. Elde couldn’t recover and lost the final set 2-6.

Ito has been one of the Orange’s most dominant players and Sunday started no different. Ito breezed through the first set 6-1 before the script suddenly flipped. After a back-and-forth second set that saw Ito narrowly lose 6-7, the junior was overpowered with the deciding third set on the line. Natacha Schou took care of business and cruised to a win in the deciding set.

Polina Kozyreva came out of the gates hot against Krishnan, winning her first set 6-2. Unfortunately for Syracuse, Kozyreva saw a similar fate as Ito. She fell to Krishnan 4-6, 4-6 in the second and third sets.

With SU’s competition continuing to get more challenging over the coming weeks and months, Limam will have to make sure his team can pace themselves, so they don’t run out of gas too early in their respective matches.

The Orange’s lone singles highlight of the day came via Sysoeva. The University of Florida transfer defeated Wang to help Syracuse avoid a singles sweep.

Syracuse will get a much-needed week off as it prepares to host its first ACC opponent of the season in Boston College on February 17 at 11 a.m.

Published on February 4, 2024 at 8:19 pm