Surprise, Ariz. — Head coach Rebecca Fakas and the Adelphi women's tennis team were on the national stage Tuesday afternoon, making the program's first-ever NCAA Sweet Sixteen appearance as the No. 16 seed and taking on No. 1 seed Mississippi College.
As the top-ranked team in the country, the Choctaws held a 25-1 record entering the match, with four singles players ranked in Division II's top 75. Mississippi College reached the final 16 after upsetting then-No. 1 team in the country, Barry University, which had won seven of the last eight national championships.
Mississippi College earned the first point of the day after taking the No. 2 and No. 3 doubles matches, 6-3 and 6-3. Katarina Liedbeck and Roisin Boyd were locked in a battle with MC's No. 4 nationally ranked No. 1 pairing, but the match went unfinished.
The Choctaws carried their momentum into singles play and while the Panthers competed , with Genesis Beltran winning a set and Liedbeck taking the No. 4 player in the nation to a tiebreak in set one, Mississippi College went on to win the match, 4-0, after victories in the No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 matches.
The 2025-26 season was an incredibly successful one for the Brown and Gold as they not only made the NCAA Championships, but won both the Northeast 10 Regular Season and Championship titles and spent multiple weeks ranked as one of the top teams in the country.
