The Slippery Rock women’s tennis team had their first full weekend of competition for the spring semester on their hands when they had matches against Davis and Elkins on Friday, followed by a contest with Division I St. Bonaventure Saturday.
Davis and Elkins is a squad that SRU head coach Matt Meredith thought his team “could handle,” and he turned out to be right, as SRU almost took the victory without a blemish, 8-1.
The Green and White continued to build off of a stellar doubles fall season and went a perfect 3-0 in doubles contests. SRU’s top doubles pairing of sophomore Lacey Cohen and senior Carla Corrochano Moracho got the best of senators 8-4, bumping their season record up to 5-2 on the season as the seventh-ranked team in the Atlantic region.
The second flight went even better for The Rock with sophomore Viola Lugmayr and freshman Olivia Warner won 8-0, pushing their record up to 5-1 in their first year together. Doubles competition was closed out by a pair of freshmen, Amy Varckette and Lauren Fadden besting Davis and Elkins 9-7.
The singles contests featured only one blemish when Cohen fell 6-4, 7-5 in the top singles flight, but SRU’s second through sixth singles made up for it.
Lugmayr took the second flight 6-2, 6-3 while her doubles partner Warner also handled business in the third flight, 6-4, 6-4.
Fadden and Varckette performed well in their fourth and sixth flights, respectively, with Fadden besting her opponent 6-2, 6-4 and Varckette claiming a 6-2, 6-1 win. Junior Allie Welch rounded out the competition in the fifth flight with an impressive 6-1, 6-1 win.
SRU would need that momentum from a win, heading into competition against a Division I school in St. Bonaventure. The Green and White ended up barely falling 4-3 to the Atlantic 10 conference school.
SRU lost the lone doubled point because Division I rules reward one doubles point to the team that wins the best out of the three doubles matches, as opposed to Division II where every doubles flight counts as its’ own point.
Fadden and Varckette fell as a team for only the second time this year 6-2 in the third flight. Corrachano Moracho was out for the day, which led to an interesting doubles pairing of Cohen and Welch in the second flight, their first ever pairing together. Despite the first-ever pairing between the two, they recorded the only SRU doubles victory on the day, 6-3.
Lugmayr and Warner were bumped up to first flight doubles, but fell to the Bonnies’ top pairing of Gabriella Bowe and Kahlei Reisinger, who are 4-3 in Division I tournament play, 6-4.
Cohen fell in the top singles flight for the second match in a row, this time due to retirement, and St. Bonaventure jumped out to a 3-0 lead after Warner fell in the third flight, 6-4, 6-2.
Although things looked bleak, two strong singles performances led to SRU pulling within one point. Welch took the fifth flight 6-4, 6-1, and Lugmayr ran the second singles for the day, 6-1, 7-6. Welch improved her singles record to 7-2 for the year, and Lugmayr bumped up to 7-3 in singles matches.
The fourth flight ended up being a lengthy battle, but the Bonnies claimed the match when Fadden fell 6-5, 6-7, 7-5. Although the match was already decided, Varckette claimed her fourth-straight singles win 4-6, 6-2, 10-7 to end the day on a high note.
The Green and White will return to action on Saturday against Saginaw Valley State in Erie, Pa.
