CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – Second-seeded Lindsay Eisenman and Rebecca Kong of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps earned a three-set win (6-1, 2-6, 7-6) over top-seeded Sandra Sikharulidze and Matia Cristiani of Babson, taking the decisive tiebreaker 7-3, to win the NCAA Division III Women's Tennis Doubles national title on Monday afternoon at the Champions Tennis Club.

With the win, Eisenman successfully completes the career "triple crown" of tennis, winning the team national championship as a first-year in 2023, capturing the singles national championship last year, and then earning the doubles national championship this year with Kong.

Eisenman and Kong also won the ITA Cup doubles championship in the fall, sweeping both national titles in the same academic year. They become the second doubles national championship team in program history, joining Catherine Allen and Caroline Cox, who won an all-CMS doubles final in 2019 over Sarah Bahsoun and Nicole Tan.

CMS took the first three points of the tiebreaker, but Babson was able to get it back to within 4-3. The Athenas took the next two points on Babson's serve to go ahead 6-3, and on their first match point up 6-3, Eisenman had a service winner when Babson's return went into the net, giving the Athena duo the national title.

The third set was tied 5-5, when CMS came up with a key break. Tied 30-30, Kong hit a hard shot along the baseline that Babson wasn't able to return with much pace, and Eisenman put away an easy volley. On Babson's second serve, Eisenman then ripped a backhand return that Babson couldn't volley. The Beavers broke right back, though, to force it to a tiebreaker.

Eisenman and Kong had a dominant 6-0, 6-0 win in the semifinal round against WashU, when they only lost 12 points in the entire match. They also started off the semifinal match by winning the first three games at love, and then opened the fourth game at 30-0, extending a remarkable streak of winning 30 points in a row, after they closed out with four straight wins at love in a 6-3, 7-5 quarterfinal win against Case Western to come back from 5-3 down in the second set.

The finals against Babson got off to a similar start, as the Athena duo held to win the first game at love, and then won the first two points on Babson's serve, before breaking at deuce. After Babson broke back, Eisenman and Kong rattled off four straight wins for a 6-1 first set victory and the early upper hand.

Cristiani and Sikharulidze regrouped after the intermission and held for the first game of the second set, and then broke to go up 2-0. After a hold made it 3-0, Eisenman and Kong rattled off another dominant love game to hold, but the Beavers were able to hold on to take the second set 6-2 for a split. Each team broke the other's serve in the first four games of the third set, before Babson got the first hold to go up 3-2.  The Beavers had two break points in the next game, but the Athenas were able to get the hold at deuce to level it back up 3-3.

The start of the match was delayed by a half hour, so that Cristiani could play in the singles championship, where she earned a 6-1, 6-1 win over Lia Melvin of Johns Hopkins. Cristiani had won the last two doubles championships with Olivia Soffer, who graduated last year, including defeating Alisha Chulani and Nikolina Batoshvili of CMS in the finals in 2024.

The doubles title ends the 2025-26 season for the Athenas, who reached the NCAA Semifinals last week before suffering its second loss of the year (and first to a DIII opponent) against eventual champion Wesleyan. The Athenas return their entire team next year, except Eisenman, who will leave a big hole as she graduates as a three-time national champion and six-time All-American (potentially seven if she earns it singles when the final rankings are compiled).