“We’ll take it,” Way commented grimly as the match ended.

At the adjacent court, Harvard’s No. 4 player Nigel Koh was up 10-8 in his fourth game against Williams senior Julian Drobetsky. Though Drobetsky worked hard to return shots to every corner of the court, diving to his knees a few times during a long and taxing volley, the Crimson junior finally won the point to take the match.

Many a volley went longer than usual, Gemmell said, because the teams’ coach had turned the heat up on the players—literally. She said that Way had adjusted the thermostat in the Murr Center so that the Crimson players could acclimate to conditions like those they will eventually face in major tournaments, where throngs of spectators make for stuffier temperatures. The heat, Gemmell said, makes the balls bounce higher, so the players need to build the endurance for longer games.

The Crimson played on Wednesday without the help of its star player on each team—sophomore Amanda Sobhy, the reigning national women’s champion, was out with an injury, and junior Ali Farag, last year’s national men’s champion, was “snowed under with academics,” Way said, in the thick of reading period.

Wednesday’s matchup was the teams’ last contest for five weeks. Several players said they looked forward to the chance to recharge during the long break.

Crimson freshman Sam Goldberg summed up the meeting with Williams, “I wouldn’t say we expected the games to be this close, but a win’s a win... I think a 9-0 result is pretty good.”

The night was especially good for Gemmell. In addition to cleanly handling her games, the senior told teammates as the contest was ending that she had just been accepted to a master’s degree program at Oxford.

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.