Duo of DiSesa, Rodgers advance to semifinals in College Station
The women’s tennis team turned heads at the Wilson/ITA Southwest Regional Championships in College Station, Texas last weekend. Two players reached the quarterfinals of the singles main draw and a doubles team reached the semifinals.
“As a group, this is the deepest and best performance in the eight years I have been at the university,” head coach Roger White said.
The fifth-seeded doubles team of senior Blair DiSesa and freshman Alanna Rodgers won each of its first three matches 8-4, with one victory coming over the tournament’s 12th-seeded duo. DiSesa and Rodgers advanced to the semifinals after an 8-5 upset of the 1st-seeded, 23rd-ranked team of Sarah Foster and Anna Lubinsky from Texas A&M University.
“I think it was a huge mental victory for us,” DiSesa said. “It is always tough when you’re playing the top team in the tournament. I think we really proved to ourselves that we have the ability to play at the highest level.”
In the semifinals, DiSesa and Rodgers lost 9-7 to Texas Christian’s duo of Helena Besovic and Anna Sydorska, who were seeded 13th. DiSesa and Rodgers jumped out to a 3-0 lead and fought to 7-7 before dropping the match’s last two games. Besovic and Sydorska went on to win the final match and claim the regional title.
DiSesa and sophomore Dominique Karas advanced to the quarterfinals in singles. DiSesa, seeded 9th and ranked 77th nationally, defeated Zuzana Krchnakova of Baylor University in the second round in straight sets and also won her third-round match in straight sets, 6-4 6-3, defeating seventh-seeded Foster from A&M. In the quarterfinals, DiSesa lost 6-0 6-2 to No. 21 Besovic, the third seed.
“It was great to be in the quarterfinal with another teammate,” DiSesa said. “Dominique Karas also had a huge breakthrough tournament.”
Karas, who was not seeded, defeated two seeded opponents in the first three rounds of the tournament, beating sixth-seeded and 38th-ranked Anna Lubinsky of Texas A&M in straight sets in the first round and winning 6-2, 6-2 against Southeastern Louisiana’s Breda Kovac, the 16th seed, in the third round. Karas won the first set of her quarterfinal match before losing the next two against 10th-seeded and 101st-ranked Klara Zrustova of Baylor.
“I think [the tournament] reflects really well. I think we have one of the most difficult regions in the U.S.,” White said. “Last year, you had Texas reach the finals [of the NCAA Tournament], you had Baylor finish in the top 10 and TCU finish in the top 16. If you were to look at the quarterfinals of the singles [last weekend], we had the second-most people in that round, and we were equal in the semifinals.”
Rice will conclude its fall individual play at the San Diego State Fall Tennis Classic Nov. 4-6 in San Diego, Calif.
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