Sports briefly: Women's tennis wraps up Ivy season, Lacrosse hosts Yale during senior night

Women's Tennis
The women’s tennis team, which is still looking for its first Ivy win, will wrap up its season this weekend against No. 50 Princeton and Penn. The Lions’ best chance for a win will be against Penn, which is also winless in conference play. History is on the Light Blue’s side, as Columbia beat the Quakers last year for its only Ivy win of the year. The match against Princeton will be the final home appearance for senior co-captains Natasha Makaaova and Natalia Christenson. The Tigers come into the weekend 3-2 in Ivy play, and they will be looking for a strong finish after winning the Ivy League last year. The contest against Penn will feature an intriguing matchup at No. 1 singles—Columbia’s Nicole Bartnik, who is in the midst of a three-match winning streak, will go against freshman Connie Hsu, who is ranked No. 26 in the nation and is 41-2 (5-0 Ivy) this year.
—Kunal Gupta

Track & Field
Junior Sharay Hale will be the only member of the Light Blue team traveling to Starkville, Miss. this weekend to take part in the competitive Jace Lacoste Invitational. The rest of the team will be at Rutgers in Newark, N.J. to compete in the Metropolitan Championships. The majority of the team took last week off, and with just three weeks remaining until the Ivy League Championships, the Lions hope to get in top shape in trying to qualify more athletes for NCAAs.
—Jeremiah Sharf

Softball
Columbia (9-22, 1-7 Ivy) will host the Big Red (16-16-1, 5-3 Ivy) this weekend in four consecutive games on Saturday and Sunday at the Columbia Softball Stadium. The Lions dropped both games in their doubleheader against Yale last Saturday, 12-7 and 7-0, but split its doubleheader against Brown on Friday. Columbia lost the first game 1-0 but came back with a vengeance in the second, dominating the Bears 16-1 in only six innings. The Lions also have the advantage of going into the weekend well-rested, as Tuesday’s doubleheader against Lehigh was postponed. Cornell lost both of its games Tuesday against the University of Albany, but it split both its weekend doubleheaders against Harvard and Dartmouth. However, the weekend’s games will still be tough for the Lions—Cornell currently holds first place in the South Division in the Ivy League, with the Light Blue sitting at the bottom.
—Rebeka Cohan

Men's Heavyweight Rowing
The Light Blue will go against Penn and Yale in a regatta hosted in New Haven, Conn., hoping to earn the rights to the Blackwell Cup this Saturday. Last weekend, the heavyweight rowers took second to the Tigers but beat out the Quakers in the Varsity Eights when they competed for the Childs Cup. The Light Blue finished with a time of 5:31. The Lions’ Freshman Eights also finished behind the Tigers, which placed first overall at the regatta.
—Rebeka Cohan

Men's Lightweight Rowing
The Lions will travel to Derby, Conn. to race against both Penn and Yale for the rights to the Dodge Cup. Last weekend, the Light Blue competed against Navy and was defeated in both the Varsity and Second Varsity Eights. However, the Freshman Eights were victorious at the regatta as they held off two Navy teams, winning with a time of 6:21.4. The regatta is currently scheduled to kick off at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning.
—Rebeka Cohan

Lacrosse
The women’s lacrosse team (2-8, 0-4 Ivy) will host Yale (2-9, 0-4 Ivy) in its final home game of the year during Senior Night. The Light Blue is just coming off a 13-11 win over Lafayette this past Wednesday, just its second win of the season. Sophomore attacker Kacie Johnson has been on fire for the Lions lately—she not only scored four times in Wednesday’s win but also produced a record number eight goals in last week’s overtime loss to Quinnipiac. The Lions will need the sophomore to produce tallies the way she has been if they hope to come out on top against Yale. The Bulldogs come into Friday’s contest having recently lost handily in two consecutive matchups to No. 13 Princeton and No. 24 Georgetown. The Bulldogs’ only wins this year came against Colgate and Marist. Columbia will look to notch its first win against Yale in the history of the program at Robert K. Kraft field at 4 p.m.
—Rebeka Cohan

Men's Golf
With the Ivy League Championships right around the corner, both the men and women’s golf teams will be competing this weekend. The men will take part in the Navy Spring Invitational on Saturday and Sunday at Naval Academy Golf Club in Annapolis, M.D. The women will be much closer to home, hosting the fifth annual Roar-EE Invitational at Spook Rock Golf Course in Suffern, N.Y. on Friday and Saturday.
—Jeremiah Sharf

Archery
This weekend, the archery team will travel to Williamsport, Pa. to compete in the Eastern Regional Intercollegiate Archery Championships. This will be the second outdoor tournament for the Light Blue, after competing in the Nanook of the North tournament last weekend, where juniors Sarah Chai and Sydney Shaefer were Columbia’s top scorers. The Lions took five medals and hope to build on that in their second-to-last tournament before Nationals.
—Myles Simmons