CLAREMONT, Calif. -
Rebecca Kong won the ITA West Region singles and doubles championships, teaming for the doubles title with
Lindsay Eisenman, who won her third doubles championship in three tries, as the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women's tennis team swept the two major championships on Sunday afternoon at Pomona-Pitzer's Pauley Tennis Complex.
Kong went three sets in singles to defeat first-year teammate
Ananya Sriniketh 6-2, 2-6, 6-4, in the finals, with both players advancing to the ITA Cup in Rome, Georgia in two weeks. Kong and Eisenman earned a 6-2, 7-5 win in doubles over Greta Nagy and Elina Shalaev of Occidental, coming back from 3-0 down in the second set to earn a sweep.
Eisenman won the ITA West Regional doubles title in 2022 with Gabby Lee, and then won the 2023 title with
Ella Brissett. She studied abroad last fall and did not compete in the ITA Regionals, but went on to win the NCAA Division III singles title in the spring.
The Athenas had six of the eight quarterfinalists in singles, with
Shifali Dinesh earning a win over
Emily Ing, Sriniketh winning a third-set tiebreaker over
Bell Zhou, and Kong defeating
Rachel Garton. Ing and
Bell Zhou also advanced to the semifinals in doubles, while Dinesh and Garton reached the quarterfinals, as did
Celestina Cedillo-Vayson de Pradenne and Sriniketh.
Sriniketh had an impressive debut in ITA competition reaching the finals as an unseeded player. She won her first match 6-0, 6-3 over Aditi Gulati of Pomona-Pitzer, and then knocked off Shalaev, the tournament's No. 6 seed, 6-1, 6-4 in the second round. She then defeated her own fourth-seeded teammate in the quarterfinals with a 3-6, 6-3, 10-3 win over Zhou, and defeated Dinesh, a fellow unseeded Athena classmate, in the semifinals.
In the championship match, Sriniketh fought off three match points, coming back from 30-40 down on her serve to get the match to 5-4, and then forcing another deuce with a chance to break and get back level, but Kong was able to get the final point she needed on the fourth try.
Dinesh had a win over the No. 5 seed in the tournament, Aspen Young of Colorado College, in the second round, winning a second-set tiebreaker 7-0 for a 6-4, 7-6 win.
Leah Baroudi also took the No. 2 seed in the tournament, Maegan Deng of Redlands, to a second-set tiebreaker before falling.
Kong, Eisenman and Sriniketh will open play in Rome, Georgia a week from Thursday at the ITA Cup. To view all the ITA West Regional results, go to the following link:
ITA West Regional Home Page
