Ng Named Player of the Year; joins Mathis on Doubles First Team

PRINCETON, N.J. – The 2015 All-Ivy League Women's Tennis Teams were announced on Wednesday afternoon, revealing the names of two Dartmouth individuals.

Following a record-breaking season that saw the Big Green receive their first-ever at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, sophomore Taylor Ng and freshman Kristina Mathis were recognized for their performances throughout the year.

Ng was the unanimous selection as the Player of the Year and automatically earned a spot on the first team for singles. She was also named to the first team for doubles alongside Mathis. The last time a Dartmouth player was named Player of the Year was in 1999, when Rebecca Dirksen received the honor.

“Coach Jones and I are thrilled that Taylor was named Ivy League Player of the Year and First Team All-Ivy,” head coach Bob Dallis said. “She's an extremely focused competitor and an excellent student who does a tremendous job of representing Big Green athletics in the classroom and on the court. Taylor works very hard and is a fantastic teammate who is always striving to make herself and her teammates better. It is great to see her hard work pay off like this, and the team's hard work pay off in an NCAA Tournament bid.”

A native of Haddonfield, New Jersey, Ng went undefeated at No. 1 singles against conference opponents and was ranked as high as 79th in the nation during the final four weeks of the season. Since the beginning of the spring, the sophomore dropped just four sets while winning 42, as she won 22 of 23 matches. While on an 11-match winning streak that spanned the first two months of the spring, she was sitting as high as 40th in the national rankings. As a freshman last year, Ng was selected to the second team for singles.

In doubles action, Ng and Mathis (who hails from Greer, South Carolina) played 19 matches together at the No. 1 position throughout the entire 2014-15 season, winning all but four of them. The duo, who were nationally ranked for the majority of the spring, were victorious in all but one match against Ivy League competitors, narrowly falling to Princeton earlier this month. To start the 2015 calendar year, the Big Green pair went on an eight-match winning streak, defeating four ranked opponents.

“We're also really pleased that Kristina and Taylor were a unanimous First Team All-Ivy selection in doubles,” Dallis continued. “It's a testament to all the work they've put in, especially Kristina, who didn't have much doubles experience prior to college. We focused even more on doubles skills this year and it paid off with Taylor and Kristina's All-Ivy recognition and with the Big Green scoring the most doubles points in Ivy League matches since 2008.”

Next Saturday, May 9, No. 31 Dartmouth will face No. 51 William & Mary in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at 9 a.m.

Player of the Year
*Taylor Ng, Dartmouth

Rookie of the Year
Alyza Benotto, Brown

Coach of the Year
Laura Granville, Princeton

First Team All-Ivy
Singles
*Dayna Lord, Brown
Kanika Vaidya, Columbia
*Taylor Ng, Dartmouth
*Agustina Sol Eskenazi, Penn
*Lindsay Graff, Princeton
*Hanna Yu, Yale

Doubles
Crystal Leung and Tina Jiang, Columbia
*Taylor Ng and Kristina Mathis, Dartmouth
*Lindsay Graff and Alanna Wolff, Princeton

Second Team All-Ivy
Singles
Alyza Benotto, Brown
Rima Asatrian, Columbia
Tina Jiang, Columbia
Dena Tanenbaum, Cornell
Amanda Muliawan, Princeton
Madeleine Hamilton, Yale

Doubles
Dena Tanenbaum and Alexandra D'Ascenzo, Cornell
Annika Ringblom and Monica Lin, Harvard
Agustina Sol Eskenazi and Sonya Latycheva ,Penn

*Unanimous Selection