Tennis is considerably harder when you spot your opponent five games. But not even that could stop Northwestern on Friday.
Sophomore Alexis Prousis staged a remarkable comeback en route to an upset of No. 33 Megan Moulton-Levy as the No. 5 Wildcats (6-1) handed No. 26 William & Mary (3-1) its first loss of the season, 5-2.
NU is now 2-2 all-time against the Tribe. The Cats beat William & Mary last year after losing their first two meetings.
Prousis, who is ranked No. 49 in the country, won seven straight games to pick up the first set after quickly dropping the first five games.
“I think just winning that first game got me motivated,” Prousis said. “She started missing and I found the court, and I just kept rolling with it.”
Moulton-Levy took a tough second set before Prousis won a tiebreaker in the third set to seal it, 7-5, 4-6, 1-0 (10-8).
The tiebreaker did not come easily for Prousis. After taking a 9-3 lead, she held off a strong run by Moulton-Levy before winning 10-8.
“I was just really tight and she played some good points,” Prousis said. “If you’re down early … it’s just hard to get back, so I just made sure I did a good job with that and got on top of her early.”
Comebacks were a common thread for NU, which won the doubles point after dropping the first match when Moulton-Levy and Lena Sherbakov beat junior Jamie Peisel and grad student Valerie Vladea 8-3.
The Cats still won the point as the No. 1 duo of freshman Audra Cohen and junior Cristelle Grier held off a late run by Kate Boomershine and Candice Fuchs to win 8-5 and Prousis and senior Kristi Roemer picked up a team-leading fifth win at the two spot.
Even the Tribe’s two singles wins came with difficulty as Peisel came back from losing all six games of the first set to force a third before falling to Amy Wei 6-0, 3-6, 6-0. Vladea took a grueling second set from Sherbakov before losing an equally tough third set tiebreaker, 6-4, 5-7, 1-0 (10-8).
No. 1 Cohen defeated No. 36 Megan Muth 6-3, 6-1 at the one spot, while No. 4 Grier, playing in the second spot, knocked off Fuchs 6-2, 6-4.
“I was a little disappointed with the start in singles,” coach Claire Pollard said. “But I was pleased that we bounced back and was really happy that Lexi fought that matchbreaker out. We’ve got a lot of heart and we’re always gonna fight.”
NU clinched the match after freshman Alexis Conill defeated Lingda Yang. Yang was two years ahead of Conill at Cardinal Gibbons High School in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
“It was nice to see her,” Conill said. “You just go out there like it’s any other opponent. You don’t really think about the person you just play the ball.”
Conill handled Yang with ease 6-3, 6-2, and said it’d be fun to hold the victory over her former teammate.
“I think I might,” Conill joked. “You don’t take any match for granted and even if you beat someone (6-0, 6-0) the next time you go out there you treat them with just as much respect as if you lost, you’ve just got to handle it the same way every match.”
Reach David Kalan at [email protected].
