The Brown University women’s tennis team defeated Harvard by a score of 4-2, at home, Sunday afternoon. The win extended the team’s winning streak to four games. The team will continue its Ivy League series in Princeton this Saturday at 1 PM.
Harvard had the upper hand going into singles, up 1-0 after Brown missed the doubles point with losses in the second and third doubles. Brown coach Lucie Schmidhauser explained: “I think we came out a little nervous in doubles and our energy wasn’t as good as it normally is for us.
But I definitely still felt that in terms of the singles matchup, we could still do it.” Schmidhauser said Ali Benedetto’s dominant victory allowed the team to really feel like they were in it. She told: “She definitely set the tone because she was off the court in less than an hour.
That really tied the whole game up for us after we lost the doubles point.” The coach also analyzed: “It’s been really great to see the turnaround and energy and focus for singles, everyone has come out really ready to go.
Even players who maybe lost the first set or were down, have They kept coming back and they kept competing. That made a big difference.” Brown responded by picking up his first singles point off Ali Benedetto, who defeated his pair-winning opponent 6-1.
Ali Benedetto told: “I knew my opponent was a really good player off the backline, and I had to do everything I could to make her uncomfortable. I think I did a really good job of getting her out of her comfort zone. She is a freshman, so she doesn’t really have that experience.
I knew if I could get on this girl early and drop her a little, she wasn’t going to come back. And that’s what I did.” The Bears lost in the second single to give Harvard a 2-1 lead, but Lindsey Hofflander ’25 tied the score at two apiece with a fifth single victory (7-5, 6-3).
In the fourth singles, Phoebe Peus ’26 secured a hard fought victory despite her losing the first set (4-6, 6-0, 6-4) to give Bruno a 3-2 lead. With Brown needing just one more run in the third or sixth singles to defeat Harvard, Britany Lau ’23 rose to the occasion.
In the deciding match, Lau picked up Brown fourth and final point of the day with a 6-4 comeback win in the third set after sharing the first two with Harvard’s Sophia Ho. The game went 4-2, with the sixth single between Addison Ahlstrom ’25 and her opponent Crimson going unfinished.
Lau told: “Really just sticking to my game plan and knowing what was working and how to make the other girl uncomfortable. Standing there and having the girl hit amazing shots to beat me was really how I won the game today.”
About the Brown University
The Brown University is a private US university founded in 1764, located in the city of Providence in the state of Rhode Island, one of the most prestigious and selective universities in the North American continent, part of both the Ivy League and the Association of American Universities.
The admission rate with respect to submitted applications is around 6.6% with students from 80 countries. Financial aid from the university totals approximately $85 million each year, and more than 50% of students receive some form of financial aid to support their studies.
The annual tuition, in the 2009/2010 academic year, amounted to over fifty thousand dollars. The school was originally founded on March 3, 1764 by Baptist minister James Manning as Rhode Island College. The original charter stated that the college’s mission was to prepare students for adult life by providing them with training in languages, liberal arts, and science.
As a result, Brown still lacks business and law faculties. Manning was also the first principal of the college, which moved to its current location on east Providence in 1770. The support of the Brown family was instrumental in Brown’s relocation and subsequent financing and organizing.
The Brown family connections were very close as Joseph Brown taught physics at the university and John Brown served as treasurer from 1775 to 1796. For these reasons in 1804, a year after John Brown’s death, the university was renamed Brown University also honors John’s nephew, Nicholas Brown Jr., a 1786 graduate, who contributed $50,000.
Brown allowed women to apply to college in 1891. Among the teachers at Brown University we should mention the historian and biblical scholar Morton Smith.
