CMC75 Moments: Allen/Cox Win All-Athena Doubles National Championship for 2019 Women's Tennis
As part of the buildup to the 75th Anniversary celebration for Claremont McKenna College (visit CMC's 75th Anniversary Countdown Page to learn more), we are reliving many of the great moments from CMS athletic department history over the 75-day countdown from April 17 to July 1. If you were a part of this great moment and would like to add to the memories, or if you would like to submit your memories of your own favorite CMS Athletics moments, fill out the form on our main 75th Anniversary page.
Great Moments from 75 Years of Athletics
2019 Women's Tennis: Athenas Face Athenas in NCAA Doubles Final
By 2019, CMS Women's Tennis program had a lot of achievements in its history, including a team national championship a year before, but one thing that had eluded the Athenas was an NCAA Doubles Championship. When the championship match took place in the 2019 tournament at Kalamazoo, though, there wasn't much doubt that it would happen, since the finals featured a CMS vs. CMS battle.
The No. 1 seed of Catherine Allen and Caroline Cox, which won the ITA Cup Doubles Championship in the fall, advanced to the NCAA Division III Doubles finals in the spring with a win over Middlebury in the semis. Meanwhile, the CMS No. 2 doubles team of junior Nicole Tan and first-year Sarah Bahsoun made it into the field as an alternate, and won three matches in a row to join their Athena teammates in the finals. The semifinals featured CMS playing Middlebury on adjacent courts, and after Middlebury won the first set on each court, both Athena teams came back for three-set wins to face each other in the finals.
Tan and Bahsoun took the first-set tiebreaker against Allen and Cox to come within one set of becoming a rare alternates-to-champions story, but Allen and Cox were able to come back in the second and third sets to capture an equally rare ITA/NCAA Doubles sweep during the 2018-19 academic year. It marked only the second time in NCAA Division III women's tennis history that two sets of teammates met for the doubles championship, after Gustavus Adolphus accomplished the feat first in 2005.
As a team, the Athenas came close to winning their second straight national title, defeating Carnegie Mellon and Middlebury in the quarterfinals and semifinals, but fell 5-4 in the championship match to Wesleyan to end the year with a 27-2 record and a No. 2 national ranking.
Caroline Cox:
NCAA doubles in 2019 was really just crazy because it was two CMS teams versus two Middlebury teams in the semis. We were playing right next to each other so it almost felt like a team match. And we were cheering for each other to win but we also knew if we both did that we'd be playing each other for the championship — and it's not easy to compete against people you feel a close bond with and who you have practiced with every day leading up to that moment. But we were still very proud of each other and proud of the fact that a CMS team would definitely be winning the doubles tournament as it would be the first time in school history.
2019 CMS Women's Tennis Roster
Head Coach: David Schwarz
Assistant Coach: Nyssa Peele
Catherine Allen (Jr., Scripps)
Sarah Bahsoun (Fr., CMC)
Rebecca Berger (So., CMC)
Anastasia Bryan-Ajania (Jr., Scripps)
Caroline Cox (So., CMC)
Jessie Cruz (Sr., CMC)
Crystal Juan (Fr., Scripps)
Sydney Lee (Fr., CMC)
Juliette Martin (Jr., HMC)
Madison Shea (Jr., CMC)
Nicole Tan (Jr., CMC)
Georgia Tuckerman (Fr., CMC)
Lauren Yamagami (Jr., CMC)