By Anders Jorstad - STAFF WRITER

Women’s tennis faced tough competition this weekend during the Billie Jean NTC Invitational and many players struggled as a result.

Louise Lopez played in the A Singles bracket and fell to Connecticut’s Emma Aldermann by a score of 3-6, 3-6. She then lost in the consolation match to Sanne Louwers of LIU Brooklyn because of an injury that forced her to leave the match.

The doubles team of Sarah Bowen and Carmen Pestano played their way into the quarterfinals in the A Doubles bracket, but were unable to best Harvard’s duo of Nikki Kallenberg and June Lee, losing 8-2. Bowen and Pestano continued to stumble in the consolation match, falling to Charleston Southern’s team of Nicolin Luecke and Marketa Placha by a score of 8-1. Bianca Derrick and Lopez, a B Doubles consolation team, won in the quarterfinal due to an injury forfeit, and fought hard in the semis only to lose 8-5.

Bowen and Pestano also competed in the B Singles bracket, where they individually fell in the round of 16 and then in their consolation matches as well. Derrick was unable to get much going in the C Singles bracket, losing 0-6, 3-6 in the main round and then 0-6, 0-6 in the consolation bracket. In D Singles, Guilia Leone and Bianca Posa lost in the main bracket and then dropped their consolation matches too.

Coming into the tournament, many of the players were having very strong seasons including Derrick, Leone, Lopez and Pestano who were all undefeated in singles matches and the doubles team of Bowen/Pestano were also undefeated. The team will have a couple of weeks to work on what went wrong in the matches at the Billie Jean NTC Invitational to prepare for the ITA Regional, a competition which will be held from Oct. 17–21.