Repeat Champs: Babson’s Doubles Team Nets Second Tennis National Title

| May 28, 2025

The champion tennis players pose for a photo with their trophies alongside their coaches

Olivia Soffer ’25 (second from left) and Matia Cristiani ’26 (second from right) celebrate their second national championship with associate head coach Alan Dubrovsky MBA’26 (left) and head women’s tennis coach Emma Davis (right). (Photo: Stockton Photo)

Listen

Babson College’s first women’s national champions did it again.

Olivia Soffer ’25 and Matia Cristiani ’26 captured their second consecutive NCAA Division III doubles national championship in women’s tennis Tuesday, defeating the top-seeded Middlebury College duo of Nina Farhat and Sahana Raman, 6-2, 6-2, in the title match in Claremont, California.

Soffer and Cristiani, who are 81-8 overall over the past three seasons, captured the eighth overall national championship in Babson Athletics history. Last year, they teamed up to win the first women’s national title in school history. In addition, five teams—men’s soccer (1975, 1979, 1980), men’s ice hockey (1984), and men’s basketball (2017)—have won national titles, and David Weisman ’98 won the men’s tennis singles championship in 1998.

Soffer and Cristiani ended the season with an overall record of 26-2 to become the first back-to-back Division III doubles champions since Julie Raventos and Linda Shin of Williams College in 2015 and 2016. They also are the first doubles team to reach three consecutive Division III finals since 2014.

Soffer ends her career as Babson’s all-time leader in singles (99), doubles (97), and combined victories (196), while Cristiani ranks second in singles (79), doubles (83), and combined wins (162).

For more on the historic national championship, read more at Babson Athletics.

Posted in Community

Tagged Athletics, Class of 2025, Undergraduate

Latest Stories

Babson Professor Jeffrey Shay ’87, MBA’91, sits at a table with professors from Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Babson Works with HBCUs to Boost Entrepreneurship Education A case-writing program, which teaches participants how to develop a hallmark of business education, is one of several Babson initiatives with Historically Black Colleges and Universities that aim to empower entrepreneurial leaders and the professors who educate them.

By John Crawford

Senior Journalist

John Crawford

A writer for Babson Thought & Action and the Babson Magazine, John Crawford has been telling the College’s entrepreneurial story for more than 15 years. Assignments for Babson have taken him from Rwanda to El Salvador, from the sweet-smelling factory of a Pennsylvania candy maker, to the stately Atlanta headquarters of an NFL owner, to the bustling office of a New York City fashion designer. Beyond his work for Babson, he has written articles and essays for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Notre Dame Magazine, The Good Men Project, and other publications. He can be found on Twitter, @crawfordwriter, where he tweets about climate change.

October 31, 2025

Tagged Faculty, Inclusive Excellence, Entrepreneurship Education

Posted in Entrepreneurial Leadership