On Sunday, the women’s tennis team traveled up to Waterville, Maine to take on one of their NESCAC rivals, the Colby Mules. The Cards’ eight-match winning streak was brought to an abrupt halt as Colby used its home-court advantage to take a 6-3 win over Wesleyan.

“Playing Colby was kind of a shock because we haven’t had much competition so far this year,” said Sarah Miller ’12. “So when we had to play a descent team that we would have normally beaten very easily, we didn’t play our best.”

The singles matches started off well for the Cards, as top player Anika Fischer ’10 easily trounced her opponent 6-1, 6-2. Right behind Fischer, at No. 2, Miller also dominated her match, winning by a 6-3, 6-2 score. After that, however, things started to fall apart for Wesleyan. At No. 3 singles, Genevieve Aniello ’13 battled through a tough match but was unable to come out on top and ended the match with a 4-6, 6-7 loss. At the number-four spot, Meredith Holmes ’10 suffered a similar fate as she lost her match 3-6, 4-6. The Nos. 5 and 6 players, Linda McDougal ’11 and Casey Simchik ’10, also had difficult matches and concluded the singles rounds with another two losses (1-6, 0-6 at No. 5; 5-7, 0-6 at No. 6).

The ongoing battle continued into the doubles matches, as Wesleyan struggled to come away with the wins they needed. Fischer teamed up with Miller for a hard-fought 9-7 victory at the top spot on the ladder, but that would be the only doubles victory for the visitors on the afternoon. The No. 2 pairing of Holmes and McDougal worked hard to keep up with the Mules but ultimately fell short as they lost their match 4-8. Simchik and Aniello teamed up at the number-three spot, but were also unsuccessful in defeating the Mules and ended the day with a 4-8 loss.

“The matches did not go as well as we wanted,” Miller said. “So we were all pretty bummed with how we played. We have always beaten Colby in the past, so this was a pretty big upset.”

In addition to snapping the team’s eight-match winning streak, the loss snapped a four-match winning streak for Wesleyan against the Mules. Colby’s last win over the Cardinals came in Waterville during the 2002-03 season by an identical 6-3 score. Wesleyan has won six of eight all-time matches against its NESCAC foe, dating back to the 2000-01 season.

“We all have a lot of things we need to work on for the upcoming matches, but hopefully we can bounce back from this loss and beat Bates and Trinity so we still have a shot at making NESCACs,” Miller said.

The Cards will look to return to the win column as they head up to Clinton, N.Y., on Saturday to take on another big NESCAC rival, the Hamilton Continentals.