After a shaky start to the season, the Harvard women's tennis team roared back, winning six of its last eight matches en route to a 12-9 overall record and a 5-2 mark in the Ivy League. The women's squad ended the year with a smash, defeating Brown 5-2 and sweeping Dartmouth 7-0 to place third in the conference.

Coming into the spring, Harvard had pretty much the same team on paper as one year ago. Freshman Lola Ajilore was the only new face to the varsity line-up. Nevertheless, as the season progressed, Coach Gordon Graham found himself shuffling his players in and out of his roster due to a slew of injuries to top players. Both senior co-captain Sanaz Ghazal and sophomore No. 1 Sanja Bajin spent a portion of the season on the sidelines nursing nagging injuries. Harvard showed a great deal of flexibility and resiliency to end the year on a high note, three matches above .500.

"This season was a definite success," Graham said. "To finish off the season by blanking Dartmouth was such a satisfying ending. It was a total team effort and really tied together the year."

Harvard won all six singles matches in straight sets against the Big Green, topped by Ghazal's 6-4, 6-3 victory at third singles. Ghazal, who has played varsity tennis throughout her four years at Harvard, finished her match last, seizing all the attention and support from teammates and a large home crowd. Though the senior struggled early in the year in singles action, Ghazal emerged as a top doubles player, teaming with sophomore Sanja Bajin to form a formidable number one doubles pair.

"My inconsistent health has made this year difficult, but all in all, I'm really happy about what I've accomplished here," Ghazal said. "It's been a great four years and I wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world."

Ghazal's double's partner Bajin took this year as an opportunity to assert herself among the top singles players in the Northeast. After an early loss to Columbia's Suzanne Wright in Harvard's first Ivy League match of the season, Bajin lost only one more set all year (against Penn). She anchored the team from the number one singles' spot all season and will return in 2002 looking for her third straight selection to the Ivy League first team.

"Sanja is a great competitor and a talented player. Plus, she's only a sophomore," Graham said. "She is such an asset to the team."

Bajin's most impressive win of the season may have occurred at Texas Christian University when the Crimson defeated Mississippi State. An inspired Harvard squad surprised the Bulldogs, who were ranked 25 spots above Harvard at the match's onset and finished the year No. 32 in the nation. Junior Lara Naqushbandi took the first point, winning 6-3, 6-4 at fourth singles. Ajilore quickly followed, also defeating her opponent 6-3, 6-4. Ghazal gave Harvard a 3-0 edge in the match with a straight set, 7-5, 7-5 victory over Claudia Oliveira, setting up Bajin to capture the winning point. After losing the first set to huge-serving Amelie Detriviere, 4-6, Bajin recovered to take the second set 6-2. In the third, Bajin pulled off her best Andre Agassi imitation, befuddling Detriviere with great service returns and strong groundstroke play to take the victory and clinch the match for Harvard, winning 6-3 in the final set.