KANSAS CITY, Mo. – For the Tulane University women’s tennis team, Saturday’s match at the University Missouri-Kansas City was a simple case of “what a difference a day makes.”
Less than 24 hours after dropping a 6-1 decision at Kansas while playing indoors, the Green Wave bounced back to sweep the Kangaroos, 7-0, at the Plaza Tennis Center. The Wave swept the doubles point after holding UMKC to just three points in the three matches, and five of the six singles matches ended in straight sets. With the win, Tulane evens its overall spring record to 11-11. UMKC, meanwhile, falls to 2-12.
“I thought we played well,” Tulane head women’s tennis coach Terri Sisk said. “After yesterday’s disappointing loss, I thought we did a good job of regrouping and focusing on the things we didn’t do so well yesterday. I am pleased with today’s effort.
“Playing with more confidence and making more things happen was a little bit of it, but we enjoy playing outside. We’re more of an outdoor team and I think we just did a great job today of taking control early in the match whereas we didn’t do that at all yesterday.”
The Green Wave got things going early in doubles play as Mariam Kurdadze and Lindsay Dvorak downed Emily Lindsay and Chelsea Horner on Court 1, 8-1. Jessica Lange and Caroline Gerber followed suit with an 8-2 victory over Daniela Amelunge and Jillian Yakominich on Court 2 while Elizabeth Hamlin and Marcela Fonseca blanked Jessica Ball and Katherine Rist, 8-0, on Court 3.
The momentum of the doubles sweep carried over into singles play as Kurdadze (6-1, 6-1), Dvorak (6-3, 6-2), Fonseca (6-4, 6-2), Lange (6-2, 6-0) and Sharon Seigel (6-1, 6-2) posted straight-set victories over Amelunge, Lindsay, Horner, Yakominich and Ball, respectively.
Kurdadze’s win was her team-best 18th of 2009 and came in the No. 1 spot in the line-up as regular No. 1 Anna Bartenstein missed her second consecutive match due to a back injury. Lange posted her first singles win since a three-set victory over Northwestern State’s Daniela Posada on Feb. 7, while Siegel made her first appearance in singles play since Feb. 13.
“Liz (Hamlin) was battling a migraine today so we took her out after doubles,” Sisk said. “I thought today was a great effort by Lange and Siegel both. Siegel hasn’t played a singles match for us in quite a while, and I thought she did a good job of staying focused and aggressive in the point.”
The most exciting match of the day came on Court 3 where Gerber and Rist went the distance. Rist bested the Tulane freshman in the first set, 7-6 with a 7-4 tie-breaker win, but Gerber responded with a 6-1 decision in the second stanza to send the match into a super tie-breaker where she posted a 10-3 victory to complete the Tulane sweep.
“Obviously, today was a good day for us,” Sisk said. “That is only because we did the things that we were supposed to do yesterday. We really came back out, regrouped and stayed focused on the task at hand, and those were to stay mentally focused and getting better.
“Sweeping a Division I team is always fun. It doesn’t matter if they’re the No. 1 team in the country or their unranked. It’s definitely a confidence builder for this young team.”
The Green Wave return to action on Tuesday, April 14, when they play host to Conference USA foe Memphis at the Goldring Tennis Center. First serve for that match is slated for 9 a.m. and admission is free.
Tuesday’s match against the Tigers is the final regular-season contest of the season for both teams and the Wave will head out later that day for the 2009 C-USA Tournament, which will be hosted by Rice University in Houston from April 16-19. The winner of the league tourney will receive C-USA’s automatic bid to the NCAA Regionals.
TULANE (11-11, 2-4 C-USA) 7, UMKC (2-12, 1-3 SUMMIT) 0
SINGLES
No. 1 – Mariam Kurdadze (TLN) def. Daniela Amelunge (UMKC) – 6-1, 6-1
No. 2 – Lindsay Dvorak (TLN) def. Emily Lindsay (UMKC) – 6-3, 6-2
No. 3 – Caroline Gerber (TLN) def. Katherine Rist (UMKC), 6-7 (4-7), 6-1, 1-0 (10-3)
No. 4 – Marcela Fonseca (TLN) def. Chelsea Horner (UMKC) – 6-4, 6-2
No. 5 – Jessica Lange (TLN) def. Jillian Yakominich – 6-2, 6-0
No. 6 – Sharon Siegel (TLN) vs. Jessica Ball (UMKC) – 6-1, 6-2
DOUBLES
No. 1 – Kurdadze/Dvorak (TLN) def. Lindsay/Horner (UMKC) – 8-1
No. 2 – Lange/Gerber (TLN) def. Amelunge/Yakominich (UMKC) – 8-2
No. 3 – Hamlin/Fonseca def. Ball/Rist (UMKC) – 8-0
COACH SISK’S COMMENTS FOLLOWING SATURDAY’S 7-0 SWEEP OF UMKC
Overall thoughts following Tulane’s sweep of the Kangaroos
“I thought we played well. After yesterday’s disappointing loss, I thought we did a good job of regrouping and focusing on the things we didn’t do so well yesterday. I am pleased with today’s effort. Playing with more confidence and making more things happen was a little bit of it, but we enjoy playing outside. We’re more of an outdoor team and I think we just did a great job today of taking control early in the match whereas we didn’t do that at all yesterday.”
On what happened in Friday’s loss at Kansas
“Yesterday, the entire day, was disappointing on many levels. The first level is that our doubles went down so quick. We 0-1’d five games. Kansas is a great indoor team. We went there, played indoors and it disappeared quickly. We couldn’t break rhythm, we couldn’t hold serve and we couldn’t even break serve yesterday. Going into singles with everyone down and being beaten by such a lopsided score in doubles was hard to overcome.”
On what the 7-0 sweep of UMKC does for the team’s confidence
“Obviously, today was a good day for us. That is only because we did the things that we were supposed to do yesterday. We really came back out, regrouped and stayed focused on the task at hand, and those were to stay mentally focused and getting better. Yesterday, we literally didn’t adjust, didn’t try anything new and it was hard to recover. But I think today was a great momentum builder and a confidence builder for going into playing Memphis on Tuesday. Memphis is a nice team and with them being a C-USA team, we want to do well there. Sweeping a Division I team is always fun. It doesn’t matter if they’re the No. 1 team in the country or their unranked. It’s definitely a confidence builder for this young team.”
On the team getting a boost from the bottom of the line-up
“Liz was battling a migraine today so we took her out after doubles. I thought today was a great effort by Lange and Siegel both. Siegel hasn’t played a singles match for us in quite a while, and I thought she did a good job of staying focused and aggressive in the point.”
On the difference between today’s performance in the win and yesterday’s effort in the 6-1 loss
“Yesterday, we came out flat and we were forced to play indoors. Weather was threatening the area and the wind was really bad. But that was the worst I’ve seen our team play all year. Mariam did a great job, but the rest of the team – I’ve never seen them play so flat. I swear that at one moment I looked up and we were down 3-0 in the second set. Not having Anna hurt us yesterday.”
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