The Brandeis women’s tennis team spent the entire 2012-13 season ranked among the top 30 teams in Division III. As a team, the Judges just missed cracking the NCAA tournament field, finishing fifth in the UAA while the top four squads earned berths, but it wasn’t the fault of the top-ranked doubles tandem of Faith Broderick ’13 and Carley Cooke ’15, who also played the top two singles spots for coach Ben Lamanna.
The duo went 8-1 over the weekend, sweeping their doubles matches. Cooke went 3-0 at No. 1 singles and Broderick was 2-1 at No. 2. The duo gave the Judges a chance against 10th-ranked Washington University, where they provided three of the team’s four points, including Broderick’s three-set singles win, but the Bears rallied for a marathon 5-4 win. After Brandeis cruised to an 8-1 win over Rochester in the consolation semifinals, Cooke and Broderick kicked off a doubles sweep against Case, while Cooke’s straight-set singles win helped lift the Judges to another 5-4 win.
Cooke and Broderick earned second-team All-UAA honors in doubles, which lifted them to just the second-ever berth for a doubles team in the NCAA Tournament. Despite a loss to Emory’s first-team All-UAA duo in an opening-round loss that featured just one break of serve in each set, the Judge pair became Brandeis’s first women’s doubles All-Americans, finishing the season ranked 10th in Division III. Cooke also added a second-straight singles All-America berth by finishing 20th in the nation.
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