The Harvard women's tennis made a decisive move towards a second consecutive Ivy League Championship this weekend, as it defeated Ancient Eight rivals Princeton and Penn in action at MIT, where the Crimson is playing its home matches this season.

On Friday afternoon, the No. 75-ranked Crimson (6-6, 4-0 Ivy) defeated the No. 69 Tigers (2-2 Ivy), 5-4, and on Saturday Harvard dominated the No. 49 Quakers (3-1 Ivy), 8-1.

The Princeton match was as exciting and highly contested as the score would indicate. After the singles round and the first two doubles matches were complete, the two teams found themselves knotted at four matches a piece, with just the No. 3 doubles match to left.

With the pressure on, the Crimson team of junior Roxanna Curto and freshman Sarah McGinty rose to the challenge, coming back from a 6-5 deficit to defeat the Tiger team of Olivia Streatfield and Kristi Watson, 8-6.

"We knew that Princeton would be tougher than last year," Curto said. "But we felt we were a better team, and came out on top in the end."

Despite Curto's and McGinty's heroics, the victory over the Tigers was a total team effort.

Leading the way for Harvard was junior Vedica Jain and captain Ivy Wang, who is coming back from a shoulder injury that has kept her sidelined for most of the past year, is a two-time unanimous All-Ivy League selection and last year's Ivy League Player of the Year.

Jain, playing No. 1, and Wang, playing No. 2, both overcame first-set losses to defeat their Princeton opponents in three.

Jain fell behind Jyostna Vasisht 6-2, before rallying to take the next two, 6-4 and 6-3.

Wang, meanwhile, suffered a 6-3 set-

back in the first, before defeating AmandaHastings-Philips 6-1, 7-5.

At the No. 3 position, freshman Andrea Magyeracruised to a straight-set victory over Gailor Large6-3, 6-2, giving Harvard a 3-0 advantage overPrinceton in the top half of the singles draw.

The Tigers, however, would not go down easily,as they swept victories in the No. 4 to 6positions to knot the match at 3-3 going intodoubles play. Sophomore Sanaz Ghazal, freshmanFleur Broughton and Curto-No. 4, 5 and 6,respectively--each dropped their singles match instraight sets.

The No. 1 Princeton team of Hastings-Phillipsand Large then defeated Jain and Magyera by thescore of 8-4 to give the Tigers a 4-3 advantage.

But at the No. 3 slot, the Harvard duo ofGhazal and Broughton defeated the Princeton teamof Priya Bhupathi and Kerry Patterson, 8-4,setting up Curto and McGinty's heroics.

The Harvard victory was an important one in thetight Ivy League Championship race and helpedbuild the Crimson's confidence as it headed intoSaturday's match against the Quakers, which hadearlier defeated Princeton by an equivalent 5-4score.