Bowdoin, Babson meet in NCAA tennis third round rematch in Brunswick

Pickard Tennis Courts gave Brunswick a front-row seat to one of Division III tennis’s most familiar matchups, with Bowdoin College hosting Babson College in an NCAA third-round rematch that carried both campus pride and regional attention.

No. 7 Bowdoin met No. 12 Babson on Sunday at 11 a.m. in Brunswick after each team won its second-round match. Bowdoin shut out Roger Williams 4-0, while Babson rallied past No. 24 Skidmore 4-2 to set up another meeting between programs that have spent nearly three decades crossing paths.

For Bowdoin, the home-court setting mattered as much as the ranking. The Polar Bears earned the right to host after taking an at-large bid, finishing the regular season 17-4 and placing second in the NESCAC for the second straight year. The NCAA regional at Pickard ran from Friday through Sunday, and Bowdoin hosted a regional for the third straight year, keeping a marquee national event centered in Brunswick rather than on the road.

That visibility has become part of the story around Bowdoin men’s tennis. The program made its 24th appearance in the NCAA Division III Championship and entered the weekend seeking its ninth trip to the finals site. Bowdoin won the Division III national championship in 2016, the program’s first NCAA title and the College’s first NCAA men’s team championship, a milestone that still frames every postseason run.

Babson arrived with plenty of history of its own, even if the numbers favored Bowdoin. The Beavers were 2-15 all-time against Bowdoin in a series dating to 1997, and last year’s NCAA third-round meeting ended in a 4-3 Babson upset in the Brunswick regional final at Pickard Courts and nearby Falmouth. That result turned Sunday’s rematch into more than a routine bracket matchup. It was a chance for Bowdoin to answer at home and for Babson to prove last year was no fluke.

The winner was set to advance to the NCAA quarterfinals, with Bowdoin slated to face the University of Chicago in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Tuesday, May 19, if it moved on. For Brunswick, the weekend already meant something larger than one match score: another national event at Bowdoin brought outside attention to campus, filled the local sports calendar and again placed the town at the center of Division III tennis.