College Tennis News - No. 15 Women's Tennis End 24-Year Drought With Win Over No. 5 Stanford

The No. 15 Women's Tennis team (12-3) conquered the Stanford Cardinal for the first time in 24 years under head coach Sheila McInerney's tenure in Tempe on Saturday. The Sun Devils defeated the Cardinal 4-3, who now drop to 12-4 on the season as ASU is now 12-3 and 2-0 in Pac-10 play.

The Devils swept the doubles, with freshmen Kelcy McKenna and Micaela Hein winning at No. 3 against Carolyn McVeigh and Celia Durkin 8-1 for the first half of the doubles point. Seniors Wendy Pilecka and Jessica Leitch played a solid match to defeat Jessica Nguyen and Whitney Deason 8-3 at the No. 2 spot. Laila and Nadia Abdala sealed the sweep for the Devils with a come-from-behind victory over Hilary Barte and Lindsay Burdette at No. 1, to defeat the Card 8-6.

ASU carried the momentum into the singles, jumping to leads in three of the six matches, but the Card would fight hard to come back. L. Abdala scored the first singles win for the Devils, defeating Durkin 6-1 6-4 to place the match score at 2-0 in favor of the Sun Devils. Barte of Stanford defeated N. Abdala in straight sets after being down 5-0 in the first set, scoring the first point for the Card. McKenna drove home the third point for the Devils in her straight set victory over Nguyen at the No. 2 spot 6-4 6-4. The Card leveled the match at 3-3 with wins at the fifth and sixth spots. The match victory hung in the balance at No. 4 when Burdette came back to against Hein to win the second set 6-3 after losing the first 7-5. Hein kept battling but never looked back to win the set 6-1 to secure the program's first win over Stanford in Coach McInerney's tenure at ASU.

"For our program this was a long time coming. I couldn't be happy or more proud of the team's effort. To Stanford's credit, they are one of those teams that you have to go out and beat, and I think we did that today. We played great doubles and carried that momentum into the singles matches. We'll enjoy this win today but we are ready for a very tough Cal team tomorrow," head coach Sheila McInerney said after the match.

The Devils take on the California Golden Bears tomorrow at noon at the Whiteman Tennis Center in Tempe. The Devils remain undefeated in regular season Pac-10 play and put that record on the line.