The women’s tennis team’s season came to a screeching halt last week, as Colgate lost four straight. Colgate is now 5-7 on the season.

Colgate faced Quinnipiac University, Fairleigh Dickinson University and Army from March 6-8 on consecutive days, respectively. The weekend started out sour as the women lost two nail-biters to Quinnipiac and Fairleigh Dickinson, both by 4-3 scores. Unfortunately, the 0-2 start to the weekend resulted in a 7-0 blowout at the hands of Army. A second straight 7-0 blowout occurred at the hands of the Albany Great Danes last Thursday.

Throughout the Quinnipiac match, the women continued their tenacious doubles play, as they won all three doubles contests. Juniors Elise DeRose and Cameron Williams paired up to drop Mary Wilson and Adrienne Markinson, 8-6. The doubles teams of seniors Erin Fenn/ Cameron Thaney as well as first-years Alexandra Erickson/Stephanie Brown followed suit as they won their respective matches 8-4 and 9-8. Unfortunately, the women couldn’t capitalize on their singles play as they collectively won two out of their six matches with DeRose and Williams posting the only victories.

The women expected to rebound against an FDU squad that had lost its past seven matches, but all didn’t go as planned. Colgate underachieved, as its usually exemplary doubles play was lackluster with Erickson and Brown posting the only victory. The Raiders needed to win four out of six singles matches to come away with a team win, but they fell one short of that goal.

The weekend went from bad to worse when Colgate faced Army in their first Patriot League match of the year. Army routed the Raiders, as the Black Knights won every singles and doubles event of the day. The abysmal performance was Colgate’s third consecutive loss and furthered Army’s reputation as the best team in the conference.

Last Thursday, DeRose and Erickson won a first doubles match, 8-6 against Albany, but was the only victory the Raiders had against the Great Danes.

The women will head to Fort Myers, Florida over spring break, looking to improve before Patriot League play begins against Lehigh on March 22. DeRose, however, played a gutsy match in first singles, losing 6-3, 3-6, 12-10 to Susan Ma.

The men’s tennis team (4-5) saw no action this week and will also head to Fort Myers over spring break, when they will face NJIT and FGCU.