“Our team isn’t big, and if we have one bad egg or one person who doesn’t give it his all every day, it drags everyone else down; I’m definitely very happy that that isn’t the case with the group we have right now,” Zhou said.
The Palo Alto, Calif., native had a tough match against a William & Mary senior Alec Miller. After clinching the first set, Zhou gave up the second frame, but managed to come back in the third, 7-5. Ball also claimed a three-set victory, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4.
Zoske and Peters both fell to the respective Tribe competitors.
On the doubles side, Harvard again claimed victory, with Solomon and Weber edging out their opponents 7-6 in a critical win.
DAY ONE
On Friday, Harvard entered the tournament strong, claiming seven of eight singles matches and three of four doubles matches. Facing off against VCU and Richmond players, Thirouin, Solomon, Ball, Peters, Zoski, Wresinski, and Weber all earned wins for the Crimson, while Zhou fell in a three-set heartbreaker. Three of the wins--Zoske, Wrzesinski, and Weber--came in the form of tough three-set matchups.
On the doubles side, Thirouin and Zhou earned a tiebreaker victory 8-7, while Wrzesinski and Zoske delivered a handy 8-1 victory. Peters and Lee bested their Richmond opponents 8-6, while the only doubles loss of the day came from Weber and Solomon, 8-5.
The team has had a strong fall season, with standout individual performances across the board. Thirouin and Zhou both advanced to the semi-finals of the ITA Regional Championships the previous weekend.
“Obviously I want to see more improvement as we move into the off season before the spring,” Zhou said. “More specifically I think that individually we all have certain technical aspects of our game that could use developing, which is something the coaches have spoken with us about and will definitely be a big priority during these next few weeks before the end of official practices. Keeping up our conditioning will be another challenge that is high up on the list. That’s been a huge help to us so far this season and we definitely need to stay disciplined in that regard.”
The Crimson squad will return to the courts for its regular spring season in January against Southern Methodist University.—Staff writer Jamie Chen can be reached at jamie.chen@thecrimson.com.