More Ivy Champs

When TigerBlog saw the women's tennis team in Providence two weeks ago, the Tigers were 2-1 in the league with four matches to go.

Actually, it wasn't even two weeks ago. It was 10 days ago. 

Since then? Jamea Jackson's team won all four matches in an eight-day stretch, the final one of which was by a 4-3 score Sunday in Princeton over Harvard. When the dust on the Ivy League season cleared, Princeton was, once again, the outright Ivy champion — for the fifth straight time and 18th overall. In addition, the prize was the league's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Going back before the trip to Providence, all the way to March 30, Princeton fell to Penn 4-3 in its Ivy opener. Would the team's streak of Ivy titles be in jeopardy? 

Princeton then beat, in order, Columbia and Cornell 4-3 each, Brown 4-2, Yale 4-1 and Dartmouth 4-2 before the Harvard match. None of this was easy; the match Sunday was the most dramatic of all.

A Harvard win would, in all likelihood, have meant an outright championship for the Crimson. Princeton won the doubles point, but Harvard won the first three singles matches, making it 3-1 and obviously meaning that one more singles win would end things right there. 

All three matches still on the court went to a third set. Princeton's Neha Velaga made it 3-2 with a win at No. 1. It was 3-3 when Madeleine Jessup won at No. 4.

So who was it now up to with the Ivy League championship on the line? That would be a freshman, Alice Ferlito, at No. 5, who won her first set 6-1 and lost her second 6-1.

That's a lot of pressure, no? You already know she won, because TB already said Princeton won the match, so instead, before getting into that part of it, there's the question of who Alice Ferlito is. 

She came to Princeton from Barcelona, where she graduated from the Emilio Sanchez Academy. You can read all about how she came to play the sport and be at Princeton in this very nice story HERE. If you don't want to read it all, you can have this quote from her coach at ESA, Alvaro Pino:

“For Alice earning a position on the team, having that responsibility on the team, helps a lot in maturity, and she is a player who likes to make her team proud."

And did she ever make them proud in the third set. With an Ivy title in the balance, Ferlito won that last set 6-4. The result was this picture:

Ah, nothing like good jubo, right? 

For Princeton, that's the ninth Ivy title jubo picture of the year and 10th league title jubo picture overall. Your conference champs to date:

Men's cross country, men's indoor track and field, women's basketball, men's basketball, women's swimming and diving, men's squash, men's fencing, women's fencing, men's water polo and now women's tennis.

There are other teams with a shot at Ivy titles this spring as Princeton chases 10, which is always a good milestone for an academic year. Princeton, by the way, has reached double figures in Ivy titles in an academic year 28 times. Harvard has done it 11. Nobody else has ever done it. 

Princeton did not win the Ivy League championship in men's or women's golf this weekend. The Yale men won, beating Princeton by an excruciating three strokes, while the women's champ was Dartmouth, who won for the first time ever.

Princeton did have the league's medalist as the individual champion on the women's side. That title belonged to Victoria Liu, who won for the second time in her career, making her the fourth Princeton woman to do so. 

The others? Julia Alison (1999, 2001), Avery Kiser (2002, 2003, 2004) and Susannah Aboff (2008, 2009).

Liu entered the final day tied at plus-two with Dartmouth's Sophie Thai and then shot an even-par 72, while Thai finished the day four-over.  Liu, who you may recall played in an LPGA event last summer,  will now advance to the NCAA Regionals.