• Golf: The Muhlenberg golf team entered the third and final round of the Centennial Conference Championships tied for first with Franklin & Marshall, but the Diplomats pulled away to win by 12 strokes. The Mules took second place, five strokes ahead of Ursinus.

Junior Jesse Neider shot in the 70s for the third straight day to tie for second with a 54-hole total of 231 – the best ever by a Muhlenberg golfer at the CC meet. Neider also finished second as a freshman in 2001.

Junior Matt Katz placed in the top 10 for the third consecutive year, tying for fifth with a 233. Senior Todd Scolnick carded a 238, missing the top 10 by one stroke.

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McDaniel won the women’s championship for the second year in a row. Muhlenberg junior Kristen Bruschi was ninth with a 36-hole total of 229.

• Baseball: Muhlenberg closed out its Centennial Conference season with a doubleheader loss at 11th-ranked Johns Hopkins. The Mules (19-11-1, 10-7-1) will enter the CC playoffs as the fourth seed and will travel to the third seed for an elimination game on Friday, May 2.

Sophomore Matt Long led off the second inning with his first career home run for Muhlenberg’s lone run in the first game, a 6-1 loss.

Senior Justin Graf, who stole his CC-record 37th base of the season in Game 1, led off the nightcap with a homer, extending his hitting streak to 15 games. The Mules took a 2-1 lead on an unearned run in the top of the second, but the Blue Jays (26-4, 13-2) plated two runs in the bottom of the inning, and that was all the scoring. Muhlenberg loaded the bases with one out in the seventh, but a double play ended the game.

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Ross, showing off her gold medal with Andrews, had a 20-3 singles record during the 2002-03 year.

Ross is Muhlenberg’s first Centennial Conference singles champion. The only other player in school history to win a conference singles title was Michele Marangi, who captured the MAC crown in 1988.

“I’m thrilled to have another conference champion,” said Head Coach Linda Andrews. “Gena played a terrific tournament. She was tough in the early rounds and held her composure in the semifinals and final.”

Ross, who was seeded second, was rarely challenged in her five tournament matches. She had to go to a third-set super tiebreaker in her quarterfinal match against Caroline Celano of Swarthmore, but won six sets by 6-0 and two others by 6-1.

In her first match on Sunday, a semifinal against Ellie Suzuki of Swarthmore, Ross opened with a 6-0 win, then – as she had done in the quarterfinal match – struggled in the second set before pulling out a 6-4 victory. Nakamura defeated her top-seeded teammate in the other semifinal to set up the title match.

Nakamura won the first game, but Ross stormed through the rest of the match with no second-set letdown, winning 12 straight games. “I started to lose my focus [in the previous two matches] because I thought I had the matches won,” noted Ross. “But when you’re in the finals you don’t want to screw anything up, so I kept my focus the entire match.”

Ross expressed regret that Swarthmore’s Anjani Reddy, the 20th-ranked player in Division III and the two-time defending CC singles champion, did not compete in the tournament. “I wish she was here,” said Ross. “Win or lose, that’s who I really wanted to play.”

In the men’s tournament, the Muhlenberg doubles team of sophomore Jeff Kraft and senior Cameron Parke was defeated in the semifinals by a Washington duo, 8-1. Parke finished his career with 88 wins.

Click here for Muhlenberg women’s results.
Click here for Muhlenberg men’s results.