Tennis team hopes for upset in Hawaii
With regular season play wrapped up, both the USU men’s and women’s tennis teams head to Hawaii this weekend for to compete for the Western Athletic Conference championship.
Following two late-season WAC victories over Louisiana Tech and San Jose State a week ago, the Aggie women’s team pulled themselves out of the bottom of the WAC standings to claim the seventh seed in the tournament. They will face the No. 36-ranked Boise State Broncos, who are the second seed in the tournament.
The two teams met once earlier this year in Boise where the Broncos defeated the Aggies 7-0. Boise State won each of the six singles pairings in straight sets while sweeping the three doubles match-ups. Sophomore Hailey Swenson and senior Bridgette Strickland, USU’s No. 1 and No. 2 singles players, both narrowly missed winning the first set in their match-ups before each falling 6-2 in the second set to their opponents.
The winner of that first round match-up will go on to face the winner between the University of Nevada and the University of Idaho in second round action Friday. The women’s team currently holds a season record of 5-19 in head-to-head matches, including 2-6 in WAC play, while boasting a roster of which the majority are underclassmen. One of those younger players is Swenson, who has been competing in the No. 1 singles slot this season and logged a record of 13-11 on the year.
The Aggie men’s team also has their fair share of youth on the roster with two of their top three singles players being underclassman. Like the women’s team, the men have just one senior on this year’s squad in No. 4 singles player Mike Banks, who is 9-10 in matches this season.
After getting off to a scorching 7-4 start to the season, USU’s men hit a mid-season slump and finished the regular season with a record of 8-12, including a 0-6 record in WAC matches. Like the women’s team, the men enter the WAC tournament as the seventh seed and will face second-seeded Fresno State Bulldogs in the first round of the tournament. The winner of the Aggies and Bulldogs first round match-up will face off Saturday with the winner of Hawaii and Idaho’s first round match.
Sophomore Jakob Asplund leads the Aggie men into the tournament in the No. 1 singles slot with a 7-11 record on the season.
WAC Tournament play wraps up Sunday with the championship matches for both the men’s and women’s tournaments.
–matt.sonn@aggiemail.usu.edu