Harvard women's tennis Coach Gordon Graham loaded his team's early spring schedule with a slew of difficult matches against top 15 opponents.

The Crimson received serious battle scars traveling to No. 6 Pepperdine, No. 8 Mississippi and No. 12 Vanderbilt, losing each match badly.

Somewhere along the way, Harvard learned something about elite tennis, and facing mere Ivy opponents became easy by comparison.

Harvard (6-10, 2-0 Ivy) breezed through its Ancient Eight opening weekend dominating Columbia 7-2 on Friday and Cornell 8-1 on the road Saturday.

"Our matches early on were at a different level of tennis," freshman Andrea Magyera said. "They really prepared the team for our games now."

The strong performance heartened the Crimson, two-time defending Ivy League champs. It graduated three seniors and needed to reassert its dominance over the division.

The competition, however, once again grows tougher this weekend. Two of the strongest Ivy teams, Penn and Princeton stroll into Cambridge for its first home weekend.

"We're gonna have tougher matches this week," Magyera said. "[Penn and Princeton] are the teams to beat."

Harvard will hope to keep showing the league how much it's learned.

Harvard 7, Columbia 2

Harvard set the tone for the weekend early on Friday, sweeping the singles matches down the line.

Only No. 1 Vedica Jain, a junior, had any difficulty dispatching her Lion opponent, needing three sets to win 6-1, 4-6, 7-5.

"Columbia played pretty well," Jain said. "I was just playing as aggressive as I could."

The rest of the individual competition was a rout paced by a 6-0, 6-1 win by No. 4 Maygera and a 6-3, 6-3 victory by freshman Fleur Broughton.

Sophomore Sanaz Ghazal, junior Roxanna Curto, and junior Aparna Ravi also came out on the positive side of the ledger.