The Rock tennis team improved to 2-0 this season following an impressive 6-3 win Sunday over West Liberty University.
The win is SRU’s first win over WLU since 2011-2012 season. Rock head Coach Matt Meredith is happy to have finally bested the Hilltoppers this time around.
“We used to beat on them pretty regularly, but they got better,” Meredith said. “They’ve always been a very solid team, and they usually recruit players very well.”
SRU got off to a hot start earning the first three points from doubles, going up big early.
Junior Tiffany Kollah and freshman Allie Welch handled Andrea Puga and Alaina Pauley with ease, winning 8-0 in the third doubles.
The first and second doubles teams each produced 8-6 wins in close matches as well.
Sophomores Nina Barbano and Carla Corrochano Moracho defeated Rhiannon James and Raquel Cabero. Junior Kylee Woodman and freshman Amanda Bruscemi followed with a solid win over Ekaterina Pinchuk and Emily Dawson.
Coach Meredith has been very pleased with the doubles play by his team thus far.
“We got up big in both matches against West Liberty, but definitely need to close out quicker to secure the win,” Meredith said. “Once you close out those matches it’s huge, its like a choke-hold on the rest of the team to try and come back.”
The Rock was able to seal the victory off with victories from Moracho, Bruscemi, and Kollah.
Moracho earned an impressive (6-2, 6-2) win over Cabero, while Bruscemi defeated Puga ( 6-1, 6-4). Kollah sealed the victory off with an (6-7, 6-1, 11-9) comeback win over James. Moracho improved to 4-2 in singles play, and Kollah improved to 5-2 in singles.
Kollah who was unable to play last year due to NCAA transfer rules, has been everything Coach Meredith thought she would be.
“Tiffany is a very solid player all around,” Meredith said “She’s a very strong and smart player, and you’re going to see a lot of good things out of her this year. Once we play more and more, Tiff is going to improve and get much better.”
SRU was close to a sweep in singles play as well, but lost in tie breaking matches at the second, fifth, and sixth singles.
Sophomore Nina Barbano lost a close match (3-6, 6-1, 11-9) against Emily Dawson.
Junior Kylee Woodman was defeated by Berbel (1-6, 6-3, 10-4).
Freshman Allie Welch was bested by Ekaterina Pinchuk (3-6, 6-4, 10-6), for the closest of the matches.
“What we need to work on is making sure we continue on to win the second set, after we win the first,” Meredith said. “We need to keep the momentum on our side, and we dropped a couple matches because we couldn’t do that. Once we can finish closing on matches, and keeping our intensity we’ll be okay.”
The Rock will look to build off of this motivation moving into this weekends match.
“I hope this leads into good things for us,” Meredith said. “We’re playing a better team this weekend especially at the one and two spot. They’re tough and we’re tough too, so it will be a good match.”
The SRU Tennis team will head to West Chester University followed by Holy Family University this weekend. In doing so, the teams fall portion of play will be concluded until the spring.
