The Muhlenberg women’s tennis team won its second Centennial Conference championship in three years, its first outright CC title, by going 10-0 in the conference and shutting out six CC opponents along the way. The Mules, ranked 28th in Division III and eighth in the Atlantic South Region, received consideration for an NCAA Tournament berth.

Senior Gena Ross and sophomore Amy Schmidt reached the doubles final at the CC Individual Championships, and Schmidt also made the singles final. Both earned

Ross is one of nine players to make the All-CC first team three times.

selection to the All-CC team for singles and doubles.

The Mules picked up their biggest win early on, knocking off defending conference champion and 16th-ranked Swarthmore, 5-4, in their third match of the spring. That started a string of 11 wins in 13 matches to give the team a 12-3 overall record and a share of the program record for wins. The team’s only losses came on the road, all to teams that were invited to the NCAA Tournament.

Muhlenberg set a team record with seven shutouts. Whether playing in Deitrich Field House or on the new Kern Field courts, the squad was successful at home, winning all five of its matches and extending its homecourt winning streak to 25. The Mules have won 17 consecutive CC contests.

After Swarthmore, the team played only one more close match in conference, a 5-4 win at Franklin & Marshall. The Mules outscored their CC opponents, 27-0, in the three matches in between Swat and F&M. After four more league wins, three by sweep, they wrapped up the championship with a 7-2 win at Johns Hopkins in the season finale.

With wins at Hopkins, Schmidt, senior Mackenzie Parke, and freshman Pam Kimmelman tied the school record with 24 combined wins in spring dual matches, set by Ross in 2002. Schmidt went 14-1 to set a new record for singles wins in a season. She

Parke owns the school record with 78 combined wins in spring dual matches. Including fall matches and tournaments, she posted a 95-59 career record.

was 10-0 in CC play and 6-0 as the Mules' No. 1 player. The sophomore was seeded eighth in the CC tournament, but easily defeated a pair of higher seeds before dropping the final to the top seed.

Parke went 11-4 to push her career singles win total to 39 in spring dual matches, breaking the school record. She and Kimmelman were 13-2 at No. 2 doubles, tying the ’Berg season marks for doubles wins by a team and by an individual and giving Parke a school-record 39 career doubles wins.

Graduating with Ross and Parke as Muhlenberg’s winningest senior class were Sarah Niebler, Megan Schreiber and Jessica Freund, all of whom helped the team go 45-11 in the last four seasons. Niebler finished second to Parke in career singles wins (36), doubles wins (35) and combined wins (71). She and Schreiber rank second in career wins by a doubles team with 18, and Schreiber is third with 35 singles wins after a 7-1 spring.

Ross and Schmidt were 7-2 at first doubles and lived up to their No. 2 CC and No. 5 regional seed by making the tournament final against the top seed. Niebler and junior Emily Oster went 6-3 at No. 3, and Oster was 9-5 at singles. Kimmelman went 11-2, 8-0 in the CC.

Also a member of the CC-champion women’s soccer Mules, Schmidt became the first Muhlenberg athlete since 1942-43 to play on two conference championship teams in the same year. She provided Muhlenberg with a representative in the CC singles final for the second straight year, following Ross, who won the 2003 crown.