Women’s tennis finishes fall schedule
The women’s tennis team gets to start its winter break two months early — on the court, that is. After competing last weekend at the ITA Southwest Regional Championships in Lubbock, Texas, Rice is now done with its competitive fall schedule. The Owls will return to dual-match play in the spring.
The Owls started the ITA meet well, winning nearly all of their matches on Friday. Senior Tiffany Lee played an impressive first two contests, downing Alexandra Dyckman of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Marina De Luca of the University of Texas at El Paso while losing only five total games.
Meanwhile, freshman Varsha Shiva-Shankar earned a tough victory over Louisiana State University’s Kylie Adamek, taking the tiebreaker to win 7-6 (4), 6-3. Shiva-Shankar then cruised to a 6-4, 6-2 win over University of Texas-Pan American’s Giana Oliveira.
In doubles, junior Dominique Karas and sophomore Julio Chao overcame multiple match points to beat UTEP’s Megan Pritchard and Weronika Bloczynska in a 9-7 victory. Sophomore Rebecca Lin and Shiva-Shankar then paired for an 8-6 victory over Sara Pesic and Sofya Lifanova of the University of Texas.
In the only loss of the day, senior Christine Dao and Lee failed to hold on against TAMU-CC’s Nina Ciric and Alexandra Dyckman, coming up short by a 9-7 deficit.
Continuing into Saturday, Shiva-Shankar and Lee continued their momentum from the previous day as both notched straight-set victories. Sophomore Julie Chao, the top-seeded Rice athlete, also earned a straight-set win.
However, in the first round of the main draw, Shiva-Shankar fell 6-4 (3), 6-7, 3-6 to No. 4 seed Anna Sydorska of Texas Christian University.
As for the other four Owls in the main draw, things did not quite go their way either. Karas, Lin, Dao and Lee were all defeated by seeded opponents in straight sets.
Doubles play on the second day was also stellar. Lin and Shiva-Shankar were resilient in coming back from a 7-1 deficit to earn an improbable victory.
Chao and Karas had a bit of an easier time than their teammates, holding on for an 8-5 win. The third Rice duo, Lee and Dao, had the day off from doubles play and started consolation matches Sunday.
Overcoming their tough early competition was quite impressive, head coach Roger White said.
“Overall, Lubbock was a challenging environment to play in and the girls did a great job,” White said. “It is tough, but it is the same level of toughness for everyone competing, so you just have to learn to embrace the change.”
On the final day of competition, Chao started her first singles match in a hole against Baylor’s Karolina Filipiak and could not quite recover from losing the first set. After a nerve-racking third frame, Chao lost 1-6, 6-4, 5-7. Karas, on the other hand, was victorious 6-2, 6-0 in consolation play. Lin also moved on due to a default while Dao and Lee lost in challenging consolation competition.
However, Sunday was not a good day for Rice in doubles. Shiva-Shankar was forced to withdraw due to a minor injury, and the other two doubles teams were both defeated.
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