Babson Tennis Star Matia Cristiani Wins NCAA Singles National Title
Babson College tennis star Matia Cristiani ’26 stamped her claim as the most decorated player in school history, winning the NCAA Division III women’s tennis singles championship Monday for her third national title in three years.
The No. 1-ranked and top-seeded Cristiani (37-0) completed an undefeated year in singles play with a straight-set victory over Lia Melvin of Johns Hopkins, 6-1, 6-1, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to earn Babson’s first NCAA women’s tennis singles national championship.
Cristiani, who had teamed with Olivia Soffer ’25 to win back-to-back national titles in doubles the past two years, claimed her first individual national championship, becoming the first female student-athlete to win an individual NCAA national title in Babson history.
READ MORE in Babson Magazine: How Babson Tennis Teams Transformed into National Powerhouses
Shortly after winning the singles title, Cristiani then partnered with Sandra Sikharulidze ’29 in the doubles national championship final, where they lost a heartbreaking tiebreaker against Lindsay Eisenman and Rebecca Kong of Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, 1-6, 6-2, 6-7 (3-7). Sikharulidze also had advanced to the singles semifinals, before falling to Melvin on Sunday.
It was the fourth consecutive season that Cristiani had played in the NCAA doubles final. She and Soffer were runners-up in 2023 before winning national titles in 2024 and 2025.
Cristiani’s NCAA title in singles is the ninth in school history and the first individual championship since David Weisman ’98 won the men’s singles title in 1998. Of Babson’s NCAA titles, Cristiani has won three of them. The others were won by the men’s soccer team (1975, 1979, and 1980), the men’s ice hockey team (1984), and the men’s basketball team (2017).
One for the Record Books
As she has for much of the season, Cristiani was dominant in singles throughout the NCAA tournament and again in the final Monday, posting her 34th straight-set win of the season. On her path through the NCAA singles bracket, Cristiani didn’t drop a set, sweeping Katalina Wang of Case Western, Izabele Antanavicius of Emory, Elsie Van Wieren of Middlebury, and Serena Biria of the University of Chicago, before defeating Melvin.
In doubles, Cristiani and Sikharulidze also didn’t lose a set until the final. On their way through the doubles bracket, the duo defeated doubles teams from Mary Washington, Brandeis, and Washington University before the final. That loss snapped a 23-match winning streak that started following a loss to the same duo in the quarterfinals of the ITA Cup back in October.
Cristiani’s third national championship capped one of the most impressive careers in Babson Athletics history:
- Cristiani, who earned her bachelor’s degree this month, finished her career as an eight-time All-American, three-time NCAA champion, four-time NCAA doubles finalist, and the 2025 ITA Cup singles champion.
- Cristiani is the all-time leader in Babson women’s tennis history with 238 combined victories, and she ends her career with a 117-4 record in singles and a 121-11 mark in doubles, both of which are school records.
- Cristiani’s 37 singles, 38 doubles, and 75 combined victories in 2025–26 are all single-season records, while Sikharulidze ranks second on the single-season list with 37 doubles and 63 combined wins.
- Cristiani, who also had advanced to the singles semifinals in 2024, is the second Babson woman to reach the singles and doubles finals in the same seasons after Soffer did it in 2023.
- Cristiani won both the ITA New England singles title and the ITA Cup singles championship in the fall in addition to pairing with Sikharulidze to capture the ITA New England doubles crown.
NCAA Honors in Track & Field
In addition to the women’s successes on the tennis courts, a pair of Babson high jumpers made their own marks at the NCAA Division III Track & Field Championships on Friday in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Skyler Mott MBA’27 and Amrit Rehal ’28 each earned Second Team All-America Honors. Mott grabbed a 12th-place finish in the men’s high jump., and Rehal nabbed a 13th-place finish in the women’s high jump.
Mott cleared 6 feet, 9 inches (2.06 meters) on his third attempt to finish 12th in a field of 22 jumpers. He also cleared 6–6 and 6–8 on his first attempt at each height. He was second among competitors from the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) behind MIT junior Anthony Meng, who cleared 6–9 on his second attempt to place ninth.
Mott becomes the fourth Babson athlete to earn All-America honors in men’s track and field, and the second in field events. He follows John Decker ’18, who was fourth in the 800 meters in 2017; Anthony Rodriguez ’24, MSBA’25, who finished 12th in the 10,000 meters in 2024; and Eric Bottern ’24, who placed eighth in the shot put in 2024.
Rehal became just the second athlete in program history to earn All-America recognition with a 13th-place finish in the women’s high jump at the NCAA Division III Track & Field Championships Friday afternoon at the Veterans Memorial Field Sports Complex.
Meanwhile, Rehal finished in a tie for 13th in a field of 22 jumpers, matching Wisconsin-Stevens Point senior Madeline Zirbel and Wittenberg sophomore Cayla Eaton, as all three cleared 5 feet, 4.5 inches (1.64 meters). All three athletes also cleared 5–2.5 and 5–4.5 on their first attempts before coming up short on three attempts at 5–5.75.
Rehal becomes the second Babson athlete to earn All-America honors in women’s track and field, and the first in field events. She joins Katherine Jacobs ’22, who placed eighth in the 100-meter hurdles in 2022.
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