The Emory University women's tennis team fell in an opening day thriller as the ITA National Indoor Championships got underway Friday morning in Nicholasville, Kentucky.

The Eagles, seeded No. 4 in the tournament draw, were matched up against No. 5 seeded Johns Hopkins University in the opening round. The match came down to the final singles point with the Blue Jays escaping with the narrow 4-3 victory.

Johns Hopkins opened the match by taking two of the three matches to earn the doubles point. JHU earned the first win by topping sophomore Izzy Antanavicius and freshman Yanire Marte by a 6-2 count on court three. The Eagles drew even when moments later, sophomore Emily Kantrovitz and senior Ana Cristina Perez pulled through with a 6-3 decision on the top court. Court two became the decisive match and saw JHU edge junior Eliza McPherron and sophomore Iris Berman by a 6-3 margin to move in front 1-0.

Antanavicius tied the match at 1-1 as she started singles action with a straight set 6-2, 6-2 win at the No. 4 position. The Blue Jays, though, collected wins over Perez (2-6, 2-6) and Berman (4-6, 2-6) on courts two and five to gain a 3-1 advantage with three courts still to be decided.

Kantrovitz earned Emory's second point of the match with her 6-2, 6-7 (5), 6-3 victory at the No. 1 position. Marte soon followed to tie the match again, this time at 3-3, with her 7-5, 7-6 (6) win at sixth singles after rallying from a 5-2 deficit in her second set.

With back-to-back wins from Kantrovitz and Marte, all attention turned to court three where senior Ilayda Baykan was pitted against JHU's Sydney Langer. Baykan was in a quick hole as she dropped the first set 6-0 but was able to regroup and force a third set, winning set two 7-5. In the third set, Baykan won the first point but Langer answered with four straight points of her own. Baykan stopped the run to make it 4-2 but Langer won the next two points to clinch the match for the Blue Jays.

The Eagles now move to the consolation rounds of the tournament and will battle fellow UAA foe Carnegie Mellon University in the consolation semifinals on Saturday, starting at 9:00 AM.