The Warhawk Men and Women had high aspirations for the weekend, but fell short of their goal of sweeping the competition as they each fell to host Gustavus Adolphus in St Peter, MN this weekend.
The men felt they had the team in place this season to pull off their first win ever at Gustavus. The women were trying to win their 13th straight match and wanted to repeat their upset performance that they had last year, knocking off Gustavus in a hard fought 5-4 win.
Let’s start with the men’s match. The men looked like they were up for the challenge in doubles and had Gustavus on their heels. At #1 doubles, UWW’s top ranked pair of Glinert/Caiati had two quick breaks of serve and were serving at 6-3. At #3 doubles Krieger/Harmatys were up a break and serving at 6-5. Hintz/Scanlan were in a dead heat at the #2 spot in a match that kept going back and forth. Then the wheels fell off. #1 doubles lost 5 straight games and #3 double lost three straight, and #2 lost in a tiebreak after having one match point. The singles were then close with just about all of the matches able to go either way including three 3-set matches and a couple of close two setters. Harmatys at #3 and Halweg at #5 were the only ones that were able to pull out the victories giving the Gusties a 7-2 victory. Harmatys had a terrific third set and Halweg mounted a comeback in his tie break after being down by 3 in the breaker!
The women’s match (that pitted the 18th ranked team in the nation, UWW against the 9th ranked team) was very similar, but we did not have the crazy doubles drama. Gustavus took an early lead at both #2 and #3 doubles and took 8-3 and 8-4 wins over Stensvaag/Smith and Rutkowski/Siemon, respectively. Schaefer/Daciolas were on serve at 6-7 and had a 10 minute 14th game before getting broken for the match giving Gustavus a 3-0 lead. At #3 singles, Barau was too much for Siemon, so we were down 4-0. Things started to turn around as we had the next three matches all in three sets, we needed to get them all to get the momentum to swing our way. But Aguilar lost a tough fight 6-3 in the third set to give the Gusties the deciding point, but she sure looked good in her freshman coming out party. Soon afterward Schaefer and Stensvaag each won their 3rd sets making it 5-2. Stensvaag showed great toughness be hanging in there after losing the first set 6-0 before knocking off the #4 ranked player in the Midwest region, Sam Frank. Schaefer had to use all her variety to wear down the 6th ranked Sierra Kresbach in the third set. The last two matches went to Gustavus in straight sets as Annie Smith lost to Ali Oneal, the 8th ranked player in the region and Michelle Daciolas lost to Megan Gaard giving GAC the convincing 7-2 win this time around.
Prior to these matches the Men had taken out NAIA U of Sioux Falls 8-1 on Friday night. Danny Glinert lost to a very strong Marwoux at #1, but the rest of the UWW players took out their opponents in straight sets. Also on Friday night the women played a JV match against Gustavus. Kappel, Divelbiss, Kasten, Aguilar, Zhao, and Foster combined for an impressive 7-2 win! Then on Saturday after the Gustavus matches, the women took on Sioux Falls and beat them 9-0 taking all matches in straight sets including an impressive win in the battle of All-Americans as Schaefer took out Lewellen 6-2, 6-0. The other highlights were Kappel and Divelbiss winning at #5 and #6 only losing 3 games between the two of them.
The Warhawk men’s and women’s teams are now looking forward to Thursday when they take off for a week on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. While there the men will play 6 matches and the women will play 5 matches including some crucial regional action, so we will be having a blast and working hard. We’ll keep you posted on how things go down there. You can either simply go to
http://twitter.com/uwwtennis to view how things are going from our men’s or women’s websites or you can sign up to get our twitter updates to your phone my setting up an account through this link.
Thank you for your support, and GO WARHAWKS!!
