BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Lehigh women’s tennis team will host the Patriot League Tournament this weekend on the Goodman Campus. The league announced the tournament seeds and schedules late Wednesday afternoon and the Mountain Hawks earned the No. 4 seed and will face No. 5 seed Bucknell in Friday’s first quarterfinal at 10 a.m. on the Ulrich Varsity Courts.
The Mountain Hawks went 5-13 overall and were 2-3 in league matches, capped off by a 7-0 win over rival Lafayette on Monday. Lehigh was part of a three-team tie for third place with Bucknell and Colgate with 2-3 league marks. After a lengthy tiebreaker process, the league consulted the ITA rankings with Colgate earning the No. 3 seed with a ranking of 223, Lehigh seeded fourth with a ranking of 237 and Bucknell being seeded fifth with a ranking of 255. Lehigh defeated Colgate 4-3 in Bethlehem on April 7 but lost 5-2 at Bucknell last Friday in Lewisburg, Pa.
After seven straight appearances in the Patriot League semifinals, Lehigh has been knocked out of the league tournament by Colgate in each of the last two years. The Mountain Hawks’ top two singles players, sophomore Jenai Bilimoria and freshman Abby Farrell posted singles wins in the regular season meeting with the Bison.
The Patriot League Championships will kick off Friday at 10 a.m. with the Lehigh-Bucknell match on the Ulrich Varsity Courts. No. 3 Colgate will meet No. 6 Lafayette at approximately 1 p.m., while No. 2 seed and seven-time defending champion Army will face Holy Cross at approximately 3 p.m.
The winner of the Lehigh-Bucknell matchup will face top seed Navy in Saturday’s first semifinal at 10 a.m. The second semi-final is scheduled to start at 2 p.m. and will feature the victor of the Colgate-Lafayette and Army-Holy Cross matchups. The championship match will be played on Sunday at 1 p.m. In case of inclement weather, matches will be moved inside the Lewis Tennis Center.