Tennis
Tech’s tennis teams are on fire, with both the men’s and women’s teams recording big wins just a few weeks into the 2023 season.
The women’s team competed with the Georgia State Panthers on Friday, Jan. 20 and defeated them 7–0 for a dominating performance at the Ken Byers Tennis Complex. The Lady Jackets traveled to Berkeley, Calif. for the ITA Kickoff Weekend where they were defeated on day one by the University of San Diego. Tech lost by a final score of 4–1. The doubles pair of sophomore Kylie Bilchev and freshman Alejandra Cruz won one of the matches versus USD, and No. 10 junior Carol Lee won her singles match.
During the second day of the ITA Kickoff Weekend, the No. 25 Jackets had better success against Princeton, winning 4–0. Tech recorded two doubles wins — one from Lee and sophomore Kate Sharabura and one from senior Rosie Garcia Gross and junior Ava Hrastar — and three singles wins from Bilchev, junior Mahak Jain and Hrastar. The men’s team beat both Wofford College and Alabama State with a score of with a final score of 7–0 and 6–1 respectively on Sunday, Jan. 22 at the Ken Byers Tennis Complex.
The men traveled to Stanford, Calif. for the ITA Kickoff that started on Sunday, Jan. 29 and ended on Monday, Jan. 30. Tech fell to Stanford on the first day of the event with a score of 4–3. Junior Keshav Chopra and sophomore Rohan Sachdev each won their singles matches, and juniors Andres Martin and Marcus McDaniel took the lead in their doubles match. Chopra and freshman Elias Shokry also won their doubles match, but it was not enough to take down No. 18 Stanford. The Jackets fell on day two to Pepperdine by a final score of 4–1. Martin won a lone singles match and Tech was swept in the doubles matches.
Each of the teams will be back in action on Friday, Feb. 3. The women’s team will travel to Urbana, Ill. to compete with the University of Illinois, and the men’s team will stay in Atlanta to take on Georgia State.
Track and Field
The men’s and women’s track teams competed in the Bob Pollock Invitational on Friday, Jan. 27 and Saturday, Jan. 28. The meet was hosted by Clemson University, making this the second time this year that the Jackets made the trip to South Carolina. The Institute’s teams did not fare as well in this meet as they did in their last because of tough competition across the board. For Tech, the best event was the distance medley. The women’s team finished second with a time of 11:34.03, and the men’s team also finished second with a time of 9:50.80. For the women’s distance medley team, the athletes competing were sophomore Riley Perlakowski, senior Ilene Soleyn, junior Kayla Rose and senior Helena Lindsay. Rose and Perlakowski also competed in the women’s 800m where they finished 11th and 12th, respectively, with only two tenths of a second separating them. Lindsay competed in the women’s 3000m and placed seventh. The runners for the men’s distance medley were senior Joshua Williams, sophomore Parker Buchheit, senior Jeremiah LaDuca and senior Nick Nyman.
These four athletes were also Tech’s competitors in the men’s 800m, where Nyman had the best time of 1:52.00 and finished in 13th place. Senior Mikayla Williams, junior Shanty Papakosta and junior John Watkins recorded the best jumping events for Tech. Each placed in the top five of their respective events. Williams finished fourth in the women’s long jump, Papakosta finished third in the women’s high jump and Watkins finished second in the men’s triple jump.
The Jackets have another opportunity to bring home hardware when they travel to Columbia, S.C. this weekend to compete in the South Carolina Invitational. The meet kicks off on Friday, Feb. 3 and concludes on Saturday, Feb. 4.