With temperatures reaching over 45 degrees, Middlebury women’s tennis hosted its first outdoor matches of the season against Connecticut College last weekend. As balls whirled back and forth, the Panthers fell into a rhythm — unbothered by the chilly air — and captured their third straight 7–0 win. The team is soaring high this season and remains undefeated in NESCAC play.
Connecticut College, which has never made it to postseason play in the program’s 50-year history, limped back home.
In last Sunday’s first doubles position, Captains Sahana Raman ’25 and Nina Farhat ’25 cruised to a 6–0 victory. The dominant duo of Nathalie Vanderreis ’25 and Lulu Wu ’26 followed with another strong performance, and Ananya Annapantula ’27 and Anna Lardner ’26 won the third slot to close out doubles play. The Panthers swept doubles 3–0 before heading into singles matches.
The Panthers easily won six of the six singles matches (five of them with ease), but drama ensued in the third slot: Charlotte McCann ’26 edged the first set in a tiebreaker, dropped the second 6–4, and then stormed back to take the deciding super tiebreak 10–2, completing the singles sweep for Middlebury.
With the weekend victory, the team moves to an 11–2 record and a six-match winning streak in their first season under Head Coach Olivia Leavitt, who is only five years removed from her own collegiate tennis career at Brandeis University and yet has made an instant impact on the program.
“She has brought really great energy and she’s really process oriented,” Farhat said after a successful weekend where she extended her singles winning streak to 15 matches. “So rather than focusing on our results, she’s been really focusing on making us better as a team overall.”
Leavitt’s approach emphasizes development over outcomes, Farhat added.
“She's been great at focusing on every single individual player on our team, and bringing us all up together,” Farhat said. The players appreciate this personal attention, which has contributed to their impressive campaign.
A NESCAC championship would be particularly meaningful this season under Leavitt’s leadership.
“If we can get the NESCAC championship this year it’d be huge and really meaningful to our team — also to my head coach. It’s her first year here, so it would be cool for her. It would be our first NESCAC win in history,” Farhat said.
For a coach to do so well in their first year is rare and is a testament to Leavitt’s ability. But despite the roaring start, the team is taking it one match at a time.
“We have been focusing on just earning every single point or a single match,” Farhat told The Campus. “Just focusing on having fun, being the best we can be on court.”
The true test awaits in May’s playoffs. The Panthers have fallen short in the NESCAC finals for five years straight and the NCAA semifinals for the past three. This season, they hope to break through and bring a championship title to Middlebury.
The men’s team, ranked 12th nationally, is also eyeing a trophy. They’ve won the NESCAC three out of the last four seasons and are regular contenders for the NCAA tournament. Last Sunday, they competed alongside the women’s team at the South Street courts.
In the morning, they opened against Connecticut College, who last made the playoffs when Blockbuster was still a retail powerhouse. Middlebury sent them packing 7–0. In the afternoon, the team faced MIT, a strong DIII team that consistently attracts top recruits. The three doubles teams all won, highlighted by a 6–0 victory by Reif Larsen ’28 and Noah Lewis ’27 in the third slot.
In singles play, Thehan Wijemanne ’27 and Noah Laber ’25 secured key victories. Laber was perfect on the day, winning all four matches across doubles and singles. The Panthers almost ran into trouble as MIT clawed back two matches – one of them in three hard-fought sets. Sensing the danger, Neel Epstein ’25 shut the door in two sets, sealing a nail-biting 4–3 decision.
After starting the season in second gear, the men’s team have now won three straight. A couple of weeks ago they came razor close to beating the number one team in the country, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps College. The talent is evident, but championship aspirations will require more consistent performances.
Epstein, a senior captain this year, has seen the team through peaks and valleys. He’s celebrated two NESCAC championships but has also endured three NCAA semifinal defeats.
“Each time after the match, I’ve kind of had this sour taste in my mouth,” Epstein said. “It really helped me motivate for the following season, work really hard during the summer to try and get better, so we could eventually get over the hump.”
In their quest to get over the hump, the Panthers have a step-up on their rivals; they are an incredibly tight-knit group of players, a value passed down from senior captains to the younger players every year.
“The way that we build relationships outside the court – whether supporting someone when they have a thesis presentation or they’re going through a tough time – makes a big difference not just in everyone’s experience but also the results we have on court,” Epstein told The Campus. If the Panthers can translate their off-court unity to competition for the remainder of the season, success should follow.
As both teams approach the tail end of the season, they seek to write new chapters in their program histories — the men in the NCAA tournament and the women in the NESCAC. Each side will continue their road to the playoffs next weekend against Williams, with the women’s matches taking place at home.
