Sena Selby celebrates her three-set singles win

Posted: Apr 28, 2024

CMS Women's Tennis Defeats Pomona-Pitzer 5-4 in Battle of No. 1 vs. No. 2

CLAREMONT, Calif. - Alisha Chulani, Sena Selby and Nikolina Batoshvili each won in both singles and doubles as the top-ranked Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women's tennis team defeated second-ranked Pomona-Pitzer 5-4 in a tight battle between Sixth Street rivals in the regular season finale at the Biszantz Family Tennis Center.

With the win, CMS captures the SCIAC regular season title with a 7-0 league record, while improving to 21-0 overall on the year and stretching its winning streak to 44 matches dating back to last year. Pomona-Pitzer slips to 16-5 overall and 6-1 in league play with the loss.

Chulani and Batoshvili picked up the swing point in doubles with an 8-4 win, after Selby and Audrey Yoon combined for an 8-3 win at No. 3, giving the Athenas a 2-1 lead heading into singles.

Chulani had a dominant effort in singles, winning 6-3, 6-1 to put CMS ahead 3-2, before the final four matches all went to a full three sets. After Lauren Rha prevailed in three sets at No. 2 singles to tie the score, Selby put CMS back in front with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 win at No. 4.

Batoshvili then gave the Athenas the clinch, as she controlled the second and third sets after falling in the first to Nina Ye, winning 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 to secure the win.

Lindsay Eisenman also added another win at No. 1 singles as she battled against Angie Zhou, the defending NCAA Division III singles champion. Eisenman won the first set 6-2 and held a 5-4 lead in the second before Zhou was able to get a 7-5 split.

In the third set, Zhou was up 5-2, before Eisenman came all the way back to pull ahead 6-5. Zhou forced the third set into a tiebreaker, and jumped out to a 6-0 lead, before Eisenman fought off five match points before Zhou was finally able to prevail by the narrowest of margins 2-6, 7-5, 7-6 (7-5).

CMS will be the top seed in the SCIAC Tournament and will open play by hosting a semifinal match on Thursday, before potentially meeting up with the Sagehens again in Saturday's championship match.