Women’s tennis falls at home to NMSU, 5-2
In search of its first WAC win, the Utah State women’s tennis team had a tough encounter with the Aggies of New Mexico State University on Saturday at The Sports Academy in Logan, Utah. Although the hometown Aggies fought hard, they came up just short of their first Western Athletic Conference win.
Going into Saturday’s match, USU had an 8-4 record overall, but has stumbled out of the gate in WAC play with an 0-2 conference record.
The match-up got under way with the doubles competition. USU’s No. 1 doubles team of Senior Hailey Swenson and Junior Brianna Harris competed in one of the tightest matches of the day against NMSU’s Isabela Kulaif and partner Annemieke Witte, as the USU duo dropped the first match of the day 9-8. In No. 3 doubles, Julie Tukuafu and and Taylor Perry forced a close 7-7- tie late in the match, but eventually fell to Natalia Salum and teammate Ros-Polly Nguyen, 9-7.
The brightest spot of doubles action for Utah State came from the No. 2 doubles team of Jaclyn West and Kristina Voytsekhovic. The girls won their match handily over NMSU’s Manon Sylvain and Jodie Williams, 8-4.
Unfortunately, USU lost the opening doubles point and had to fight from behind the rest of the match.
It seemed as though the Aggie women weren’t even phased by the deficit. They opened singles competition with consecutive two-set wins. West won 6-4, 6-3 and gave teammate Swenson enough momentum to control her match en route to a 6-2, 7-5 victory. Just like that USU was atop 2-1.
Amid desperate efforts and heart wrenching three-set losses, Utah State dropped the next four matches. They would not go down without a fight though. NMSU’s Ginet Pinero took a tough, three-set victory over Kristina Voytsekhovich 6-3, 3-6, 6-2.
By the time the No. 5 singles pairing rolled around, the NMSU had already clinched the team victory. But being the competitor that she is, Harris fought in the closest match of the competition. Harris played her heart out as she lost the first set, 4-6, then bounced back to win 7-5, and ultimately lost in a lengthy third set. The two swapped point for point, but Pinero ousted Harris with a super tie-breaker win, 11-9.
NMSU won the team battle 5-2 and pushed USU’s record back further to 0-3 in conference play and 8-5 overall.
The women will take a three-week break and pick things up April 24 on the road at San Fransisco.
– bret.clapier@aggiemail.usu.edu