Ag women rusty in first outdoor match against EWU
It was a beautiful day for tennis this last Saturday, but there were clouds over the Aggies.
The USU women’s tennis team suffered a 5-2 loss to the Eastern Washington Eagles Saturday at the outdoor courts of the Sports Academy and Racquet Club.
The loss puts the Aggie women at 4-6 for the season. It was the first match for the Aggies in almost a month.
“The month break was good for the girls and they’re a lot healthier,” Aggie Head Coach Chris Wright said. “But they were a little rusty today.”
The match started with the three doubles matches. The Eagles won two of the three, earning them the point for the doubles matches. The Monson sisters, Lauren and Erin, were the only USU doubles team to win their match.
When the singles started, the Aggies came out striking the ball well. Each girl started out playing hard, with Erin Monson dominating her No. 2 singles match 6-0, 6-1. Brianna Harris followed suit in the No. 3 singles, winning 6-2, 6-2.
The other matches were much harder for the Aggies, with Courtney Anderson and Dee-Dee Nelson each losing close matches.
After those two matches, the Eagles held a 3-2 lead and needed one of the final two matches to go their way. They wouldn’t get the points easily.
Lauren Monson and Bridgette Strickland seemed to feed off the energy of having the team look to them for the two points as they started to play with heightened emotion.
Lauren Monson Strickland each won their opening sets. They then both lost their second set, sending the final two matches into third sets. Monson lost a close battle in the third, 6-4, and Bridgette pushed her third set into a tiebreaker but fell 7-6.
Although the score showed a 5-2 blowout, it was much tighter than that, Wright said. Up until the last two matches, the match could have gone either way.
On another note, Saturday’s match marked the return of Senior Courtney Anderson at the No. 1 singles spot after her one-match absence due to a broken right wrist. Anderson started the match on fire but seemed to slow down as her opponent got into a rhythm. She managed to push the first set into a tiebreaker, but was unable to pull it out. Then she lost the second 4-6.
The Aggies will now travel to Reno on April 5 to face the University of Nevada in a conference match-up.
-wwm@cc.usu.edu