The Williams College and Emory University women's tennis teams, which have won the last nine NCAA Division III championships, both won national quarterfinals Monday in Chattanooga, but they're far from ready to acknowledge a collision course for a title rematch Wednesday.
Williams is ranked fourth and defending champion Emory is third, and they have to play the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the semifinals today. Emory (16-6) faces No. 1 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (28-0) while Williams (17-4) takes on No. 2 Middlebury (16-4).
Those matches will start at 10 a.m. today at the Champions Club, weather permitting. The men's semifinals at 2 p.m. pit defending champion and seventh-ranked Bowdoin (21-4) against No. 2 Emory and No. 3 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (30-3) against No. 1 Middlebury (21-3).
The Emory men edged Williams 5-3 on Monday at Champions Club, where everything was pushed late after the first women's matches of the day were rain-delayed and then moved to Baylor (Williams/Chicago) and McCallie (Middlebury/Johns Hopkins).
The Atlanta and Massachusetts schools would love to meet again in the women's final Wednesday morning, but first Williams' Ephs (rhymes with "Chiefs," honoring school founder Ephraim Williams) must win a 2017 rubber match with their NESCAC rivals from Vermont. Middlebury beat Williams 6-3 on April 8 but lost 5-2 in their conference final on May 7.
Coach Alison Swain's Ephs had topped Chicago 6-3 in Claremont, Calif., but knew that rematch would be tough Monday. They won 5-3 with doubles wins at Nos. 2 and 3 and singles wins from the bottom half of the lineup. Julio Cancio's 6-2, 6-3 win at No. 6 clinched the win with No. 1 Juli Raventos still on the court but struggling early in the third set against Ariana Iranpour after a strong second-set victory.
Raventos and Linda Shin have won the last two Division III national doubles titles but lost 8-5 to Chicago's Rachel Kim and Marjorie Antohi, and Raventos was the national singles runner-up in 2016, but she missed a big chunk of the spring semester with an illness and recovering from a spring-break tonsillectomy and still is building her strength back.
Emory edged Williams 5-4 in March in Virginia with Raventos out.
"This is a team effort," said Swain, who was a senior on the first Williams women's team to win a national title and who has overseen seven in her nine previous years as her alma mater's coach. "And we know everything here is going to be a battle, but we like that."
Monday's win gave her a 46-2 coaching record in the NCAA postseason. The Ephs lost only in the semifinals in 2014, when Emory won the title, and to Emory in the 2016 finals in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Among those back from that Eagles team are junior Bridget Harding, now ranked No. 1 individually in singles and doubles, with Katarina Su, and senior Michelle Satterfield, ranked 12th in singles. And Emory already has won two events Sewanee has hosted this year - the ITA indoor nationals in Murfreesboro in March and the first three NCAA rounds on the Sewanee campus just over a week ago.
Sewanee also is the host school this week, which will include individual singles and doubles competition Thursday through Saturday at the Champions Club.
Shelton praised
Hixson resident and McCallie graduate Scott Shelton will be graduating from Williams in a couple of weeks, so he is focusing on that and didn't come to watch the Ephs men and women. But his mother, Nita Shelton, is working as a volunteer.
She did live scoring Monday and said she would "do whatever they need me to do" the rest of the week. As Nita Drinnon she was a standout golfer at GPS and Kentucky.
And her son has made quite a reputation as a student worker in the sports information office.
"He's one of the best we've ever had," associate director Dick Quinn said Monday in an email, noting that Scott got the school's one-of-a-kind Frank Deford Award for outstanding contributions as a student worker in 2016 and was given an outstanding achievement award this year (one of only four in 28 years), "as you can win only one Frank Deford Award in your Williams career."
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.