For the first time since 2021, William and Mary women’s tennis has returned from the Coastal Athletic Association Championships empty-handed. Sunday, April 27, the three-time defending CAA champion Tribe (14-6, 4-1 CAA) was denied in its quest for a fourth straight trophy, dropping a 4-2 title-match decision to Elon (19-5, 4-0 CAA) at the Jimmy Powell Tennis Center in Elon, N.C.
Prior to April 19, William and Mary had not lost a CAA match in three seasons; it has now dropped two in eight days, both against the Phoenix, which bested the Tribe in the regular season finale. In 2022, the Green and Gold beat Elon in the finals of the CAA tournament. Three years later, the Phoenix took its revenge, cruising to the doubles point and pulling out a series of hotly-contested singles matches to clinch its first-ever conference title.
“I ultimately feel that [Elon] had very, very good energy,” William and Mary head women’s tennis coach Jessica Giuggioli said. “They found a way to play with less pressure, and they took it away from us.”
William and Mary kicked off the weekend with a convincing win. The No. 2 seed Tribe received a bye into the tournament semifinals and began play Saturday against No. 3 Delaware. Although the singles portion of the contest proved to be competitive, William and Mary ultimately took every match and claimed a 4-0 victory. At the time of the first serve, the Green and Gold sported a perfect 11-0 all-time record against the Blue Hens, a mark it upheld with ease.
The afternoon began with a lopsided doubles win for the Tribe. William and Mary seniors Hedda Gurholt and Ine Stange overwhelmed the Delaware duo of senior Alina Vasilenko and freshman Cornelia Kack 6-1 on court No. 1. Gurholt, the two-time defending Most Outstanding Player of the CAA Championship, said that the Tribe leaned on its postseason experience to overcome the nerves it felt heading into the tournament.
“We have an old team,” Gurholt said. “We have a lot of seniors, a lot of people who have played at this before, so we kind of knew what we were getting into, but there’s always a little nerves when you come in and play. Especially now, coming straight to the semifinals. Everyone was a little nervous, but we were all very excited. So it definitely made a difference that we’d played before.”
William and Mary proceeded to clinch the doubles point after senior Emma Fernald and freshman Mira Kernagis defeated the Delaware pair of seniors Greta Schieroni and Samantha Svendsen 6-1 on court No. 3. Senior Alessandra Anghel and sophomore Francesca Davis, the Green and Gold’s winningest doubles duo in 2025, left their match on court No. 2 unfinished.
Kernagis built on her team’s momentum to begin the singles matches, sweeping past Kack in straight sets on court No. 6. Kernagis’ 6-3, 6-1 victory marked her 11th singles win of the dual season and the first postseason win of her career.
Leading 2-0, William and Mary had a championship bid within its reach, but Delaware did not go down without a fight: the Blue Hens and the Tribe split the first two singles sets on each of the top five courts. It was Davis that righted the Green and Gold’s ship, edging out Schieroni for a 6-1, 1-6, 6-4 victory, before Gurholt slammed the door on Delaware. The Tribe’s top-seeded player coasted past Delaware junior Maryia Hrynashka in a tiebreaking set, winning the match 6-3, 3-6, 6-1.
Giuggioli praised her squad’s resilience and fighting mindset, something she said the Tribe had focused on in its pre-tournament preparation.
“One of the things that we’ve been talking about as a team was to make sure that we competed at every single spot in the lineup for doubles and singles,” Giuggioli said. “I felt that against Delaware, that’s exactly what we did. At the end of the day, if we put ourselves in position, oftentimes things go our way, and that’s what we did. I felt very good about our match on Saturday.”
The Tribe continued to put its competitive spirit on display in the early stages of the doubles matches against Elon. On court No. 3, Fernald and Kernagis defeated the Phoenix duo of senior Miray Konar and freshman Heidi Bulger 6-1, turning the tables from the program’s regular-season meeting, when Konar and Bulger edged out Fernald and Kernagis 6-4. The win put the Tribe within striking distance of the crucial doubles point, a factor that Giuggioli identified as deciding in William and Mary’s April 19 loss to Elon.
However, the Phoenix roared back. On court No. 2, the pair of Anghel and Davis, which had previously suffered just two losses on the season, fell to Elon freshman Lisa Kranec and junior Helen Sarikulaya 6-3. On court No. 1, Gurholt and Stange lost 6-3 to Elon sophomores Simone Bergeron and Mariana Reding, marking their second defeat against the duo in two weeks.
“That team has terrific energy from the start,” Giuggioli said. “Bergeron is a great volleyer. If you’re not aggressive from the baseline, you’re not going to get that ball past her, and I think she executed great in the tournament. She did it in doubles, she did it in singles, so it was a very tough position to play. I think [Gurholt and Stange] got a little bit closer to it last week. They lost 6-4 [April 19], and [Sunday] was 6-3. But overall, that was a tough position, and I think we had our chances, but at the end of the day that was a very top team.”
With the doubles point secured, the Phoenix proceeded into singles, needing to win just three matches to clinch a CAA title. Anghel pounced on Reding, rattling off a quick 6-3, 6-4 victory and becoming the first player all season to score a win against her on court No. 2, but Bulger responded with a 6-2, 6-0 drubbing of Chaudry on court No. 4.
On court No. 3, Stange kept William and Mary alive with a 6-3, 6-3 straight set win over Sarikulaya. As Stange’s match finished, it seemed as though Kernagis was closing in on a potentially game-changing victory on court No. 6. The Tribe freshman won the first set 6-3 against Kernagis before she streaked ahead 3-0 in the second, but Elon again manufactured a response. Facing defeat, Kranec won six of seven games to tie the match at one set.
The story shifted in the tiebreaking set, as Kranec was the one to accumulate a substantial lead, racing out to a 5-1 advantage. Kernagis mounted a spirited resistance, winning two consecutive games with her back against the wall, but Kranec ultimately emerged victorious and put Elon up 3-2.
“The importance of having every court compete is also to keep the pressure off of the courts that are still playing,” Giuggioli said. “As that court finished, I’m sure that put the pressure on the two courts that were still on, there is no doubt.”
The championship came down to court No. 1, where Gurholt took on Bergeron, whom she had beaten 6-3, 6-2 during the regular season. The pair played a much more competitive match this time around, splitting their first two sets by razor-thin margins, but a Bergeron surge in the third set proved too much for Gurholt to overcome. The Elon sophomore took a 5-2 lead, and although Gurholt cut her deficit to 5-4, Bergeron took the tenth and final game and crumpled to the court as her teammates piled onto her.
“Hedda is great at comebacks,” Giuggioli said. “She’s the kind of player that has been in that position many times, and I’ll be honest: nine out of ten I can count her to be able to pull through on the tough matches. She’s the kind of player that thrives in close competition, and I think the tension of it possibly being her last match got to her. But again, I also do think that she played a very tough opponent that didn’t give her anything.”
Giuggioli did not ascribe her team’s loss to a lack of effort, praising William and Mary’s energy. Instead, she said, the Tribe wasn’t able to fully overcome its nervousness despite its wealth of postseason experience.
“At the end of the day, what I said to the girls is that we went out there and we competed,” Giuggioli said. “We did do that at every court, which was the number one expectation that we had going into the whole tournament, so I was very happy with how we did that against Delaware, and to be honest, I feel that we can walk with our heads held high because we did that on Sunday as well. I think we let nerves get the best of us in some key moments, but at the end of the day, we still had a good season.”
William and Mary remains the standard for success in the CAA. The Tribe has reached ten consecutive conference championship matches; it has won 29 CAA titles; it boasts a 73-10 record in CAA tournament games. However, one of the winningest classes in program history is graduating. Gurholt, the two-time reigning CAA Player of the Year, Fernald, a 2023 and 2024 all-CAA honoree, Stange, a 2023 and 2024 all-CAA honoree and Anghel, a 2024 all-CAA honoree, will not don a Tribe uniform again.Â
Tasked with beginning a new era, Giuggioli and her staff face an offseason of questions. Giuggioli said the Tribe will begin to lay the foundations of its next championship-winning teams over the summer as it acclimates a new class of players to the program’s culture.
“We’re going to have four incoming freshmen next year,” Giuggioli said. “I think it’s going to be a big year where we’re going to have to focus a lot on team culture again, and team expectations, and making sure that we set everybody on the right path right from the beginning. Obviously, we’ve [going to lose] quite a bit of leadership, in some ways, with four seniors being on the team this year. So I think just making sure that we really put a lot of emphasis on team expectations and culture is going to be the key to have a successful year next year.”
