The Sam Houston State University tennis team dropped two matches over the weekend against the University of Louisiana of Monroe and Louisiana Tech University. The Bearkats fell to the ULM 7-0 on Saturday and 6-1 on Sunday against LTU, bringing their season record to 2-2.
“Our expectation for last weekend was just to compete and see where we stood with the two teams,” head coach Rob Hubbard said. “We certainly had a chance that I felt we could have won, but it is still very early in the season.”
In the match against the ULM Warhawks in Monroe, LA, the Bearkats had a difficult time gaining momentum on the court. ULM swept through all three doubles matches and the four singles matches against the Bearkats before taking the 7-0 win and improving their season record to 2-1.
Luana Stanciu and Tiffany Mylonas of ULM took the doubles point from sophomore Ema Barkovic and freshman Diane Friedrichs in the No. 3 position. Juniors Khee Yen Wee and Fabienne Gettwart were also defeated in the No. 2 slot.
The first singles point of the match was captured by the Warhawks in a straight set of 6-2, 6-0 over Gettwart in the lineup’s top spot. ULM went on to secure the win in both the number six and four positions before taking the victory.
“Things didn’t go well from the start against Louisiana Monroe,” Hubbard said. “We were constantly behind and trying to play catch up, which was not a good thing. But individually there were some good matches.”
Despite falling 6-1 against LTU, the Bearkats put up a much stronger fight against the LTU Bulldogs on Sunday.
“We competed much better on Sunday than we did Saturday,” Hubbard said. “We picked up and looked at somethings that we learned from the match against Louisiana Monroe and did a much better job against Louisiana Tech.”
Wee and Gettwart, the number two duo, earned the team’s only point of the match after a 1-1 victory over Sonia Chen and Alba Escalona Perny in double play. The Bulldogs had to fight through three full sets against Milanovic, but she was eventually defeated in the third set 6-4.
The Bearkats continued a tough fight against LTU after Gettwart was caught in a 7-6, 7-6 tie with Jazmin Britos, but the junior fell to Britos in the tiebreaker 9-7. Wee also fought with LTU to a tiebreak in the second set, but the junior ended up losing the point at the number three singles 6-7, 7-6, 7-3.
“Every singles match was extremely close,” Hubbard said. “It was very possible to have won against them [LTU], but I’m happy with what they put out in both matches. The effort was definitely 100 percent there.”
The Bearkats will travel to Dallas on Friday where they will face off against Southern Methodist University at the Turpin Stadium & Brookshire Family Pavilion at 5 p.m.
SMU will go into the match with an overall record of 2-2 after they defeated both Abilene Christian University and Prairie View A&M 6-1 in the team’s first dual match of the 2017 season last Sunday. The victory over ABU is the tenth all-time victory against the Wildcats.
“SMU is an even tougher opponent,” Hubbard said. “They are always very strong. So we will need to go out and raise our level of expectations for ourselves, our levels of play and follow through with what we learned this past weekend.”