SATELLITE BEACH, Fla. — After dropping the doubles point, the St. Mary's University Women's Tennis team buckled down and won four of five singles matches to clinch the 4-2 win over Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) as the teams played in clinch format.
"IUP really outplayed us in the second and third doubles with their aggressiveness, which is to be expected from a team that plays a lot of indoor tennis," said Director of Tennis
Bill Macom. "However, the team did a great job by not panicking during the singles."
The duo of
Janel Ospanova (Karaganda, Kazakhstan) and
Stela Sifuentes (Eagle Pass, Texas) won 6-4 at number one doubles, defeating the fifth-ranked team of Ming Deewajee and Dani Ramos, but the Crimson Hawks had already won at two and three doubles for the first point of the day.
IUP took the second point, winning in straight sets at number four singles before the Rattlers rallied off four in a row, starting with junior
Alessia Terlizzi (Andria, Italy), who won 6-1, 6-1 at number three.
Sophomore
Selina Wu (San Gabriel, Calif.) won with identical set scores of 6-2 on court one to tie the team score at 2-2.
Gia Posito (Houston) finished fourth, winning set one 6-3 before dropping the second set 6-2 and fighting back for the 6-2 third set win.
Sifuentes clinched the match at number six singles. She won a hard-fought tiebreaker, 8-6 in the first set and then got a late break of serve to win 7-5 in the second set.
"Selina and Alessia were able to finish their matches pretty quickly at a high level, which we really needed to tie the score two-all," Macom stated. "Gia did a great job running after every single shot, which obviously paid off winning her third set, and Stela was able to hold serve that last game, following a pretty good pattern on the deuce and add courts for each point. IUP is a very solid team, and I think our experience helped us."
Posito, Sifuentes and Terlizzi have all now won three straight singles matches, while Wu has won twice in a row.
The Rattlers wrap up their Spring Break trip on Friday, facing #24 Ferris State at 10:30 a.m. (ET)/9:30 a.m. (CT)
