The West Point Eastern Tennis Invitational is one of the largest pre-season tennis tournaments in the country with over thirty teams from colleges all over the East Coast participating. This is where the Colgate women’s tennis team found themselves this past weekend. The tournament was a great opportunity for Colgate to check out Patriot League rivals Bucknell and Army prior to the regular season. Unfortunately, the benefits of this tournament ended there, as the Raiders got trounced on almost every level of competition.

Senior Samantha Inacker was bounced from singles competition, but fared well in the consolation singles bracket. Inacker defeated Seton Hall’s Elizabeth Verow, 8-3, advancing her to the semi-finals of the consolation bracket. Her streak would end there though, as she was stopped beaten by Binghamton’s Lauren Bates. Inacker finished 2-2 on the weekend and asserted herself as a leader for the women’s team this upcoming season.

Fellow senior Cameron Williams did not have as much success as her teammate. Williams fell to 0-2 in singles play during the tournament and failed to pick up the slack for missing senior Erin Fenn who was unable to attend due to a time conflict with the LSATs.

Inacker knew that the sub-par performance of the Raiders was not characteristic of this tenacious group of women, “We have a couple injuries and girls sick so that’s been a little bit tough on the team, Inacker said.”

The star of the tournament for the Raiders was sophomore Stephanie Brown who defeated Niagara’s Raquel Solis, 6-2, 1-6, 10-7 and advanced to the Sweet Sixteen of the championship bracket before being knocked out by Fairleigh Dickinson’s Julia Prantl, 6-2, 6-0.

The Raiders look to overcome the minor problems that they have encountered thus far in the fall season in order to be in top shape for the regular season. As long as talented underclassmen such as Brown continue to step up the Raiders will be a force to be reckoned with come spring.