WELLESLEY, Mass. — Senior Matia Cristiani (San Salvador, El Salvador) and first-year Sandra Sikharulidze (Kyiv, Ukraine) won matches in both singles and doubles as No. 14 Babson College pulled off an upset victory over No. 7 Johns Hopkins University, 4-3, in the women's tennis spring opener Saturday evening inside the Longfellow Health Club.

The Beavers improve to 2-0 this year while Johns Hopkins, which lost to Brown (7-0) earlier in the day in Providence, drops to 0-2. Babson avenged a 4-2 loss to the Blue Jays in the second round of last year's NCAA tournament.

Sophomore Sarai Dorismond (Carlsbad, Calif.) and first-year Jolie Wang (Los Altos Hills, Calif.) won a key doubles match for the Beavers, and first-year Elizabeth Shu (Sugar Land, Texas) earned a singles win to help secure the team victory.

Senior Kamila Wong (Palo Alto, Calif.) was a two-time winner for the Blue Jays, including a doubles win with sophomore Ava Li (Forest Hills, N.Y.), and sophomore Sahana Madala (Frontenac, Mo.) and junior Sydney Langer (Short Hills, N.J.) also posted singles wins in the setback.

Babson prevailed in the marquis doubles match to open the scoring. Cristiani and Sikharulidze, who are ninth in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Division III rankings, took down JHU's top pair, juniors Lia Melvin (Joppa, Md.) and Sophia Kim (Hinsdale, Ill.), 6-2. Dorismond and Wang helped Babson clinch the doubles point by registering a 6-4 victory in the third flight over Madala and first-year Claire Loftus (Rochester, Minn.), who are sixth in the ITA Division III rankings. Wong and Li, who are 21st in the rankings, defeated Shu and sophomore Alessandra Cristiani (San Salvador, El Salvador) at number two, 6-4.

Matia Cristiani, who is No. 1 in the ITA Division III singles rankings, defeated 30th-ranked Melvin in the top singles flight, 6-2, 6-1. Johns Hopkins took the next two matches, with Wong defeating Dorismond at number four, 6-3, 7-5, and Madala posting a 6-1, 6-0 triumph at number five over Liu, who is ranked 34th, evening the team scoring at 2-2.

The Green and White clinched the team outcome when Shu defeated Loftus, 6-4, 7-6 (7-0), and Sikharulidze outlasted Li, 7-6 (7-4), 7-6 (8-6). Langer came back to win the final match for the Blue Jays at number six over Wang, 1-6, 6-2, 7-5.

Babson will be back on the courts against No. 24 NYU on February 28 in Cambridge, Mass. Johns Hopkins will take on Lehigh on March 7 in Bethlehem, Pa.

MATCH NOTES
• Babson and Johns Hopkins are tied 1-1 in the all-time series that began at the NCAA Tournament last spring.
• Saturday's match was the first of six straight matches for Babson and 12 overall this spring against teams ranked in the ITA Division III poll.
• Matia Cristiani improved her career records to 97-4 in singles and 99-10 in doubles, and her 196 combined victories matches the program record for combined victories held by former doubles partner Olivia Soffer '25.