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Women’s tennis falters in championship dual
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Last weekend the women’s tennis team fought valiently in the Women’s Western Athletic Conference tournament en route to a Championship dual appearance.
The women swept Nevada 4-0 on Thursday and then again swept Hawaii on Friday. But the magic of Head Coach Mark Tichenor and company finally ran out when they faced the 16th ranked Fresno State Bulldogs. The Broncos got off to a rough start on Saturday when they went down 0-2 in doubles.
After that it took them a while in singles competition to warm up as well. Bianca Jochimsen didn’t win any games in the first set against the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s 3rd ranked Melanie Gloria. Then she was only able to win three in the second set. Polina Kokoulina lost 2-6 in the first set in her match. In the second set she rallied with three straight games – tying the set 5-5 before the match was called due to time constrainsts. Klaudia Wlodarczyk lost her first set 3-6 then won her second set 6-3 before the match was called due to time constraints. Stacey Housley lost her first set 7-6 then won the first game of the second set before the tournament was called.
“They battled and unfortunately we just got behind today, bad,” Tichenor said. “But then we started to come back a little bit. We started to and we were in the third set, then four, we’re five all. We were only down a set 7-6 there. You gotta hand it to them. They got us down early. They kept the crowd out of it. They kind of hammered us in that way.”
Making the finals of the WAC Championship for Tichenor was enough for him to see a bright future for his team. He knows that they will walk away from this as a learning experience and he is proud of how hard they fought and that they gave their all. He is ready to move ahead and see what happens in the NCAA proceedings.
“We’ll bounce back,” Tichenor said. “Are team has been resilient, we’ve learned after every loss. Hopefully we can make the NCAA tournament. We’ve always learned and we’ve always played better the next match.”
The season isn’t guaranteed to be over after failing to win the
conference title, however. The WAC champion receives an automatic berth to the NCAA tournament, but it is also possible to receive an at-large bid to post season play as well.
“Obviously we have a goal of winning the WAC like every team in every sport and our latest goal is to try get an NCAA at-large birth,” Tichenor said. “We’re right there at (No.) 44. We’re in the hunt for that too. We played all season down a player. Even today, she played doubles but she didn’t play singles. Those are the breaks everybody has to play through those and
everything. I’m just proud of our girls they hung in there. They
battled it out all year. They sacrificed stuff. There’s always next year. We’ll battle back. We’re a resilient team. We’ve come a long way in the last three years.”
Despite fighting against all the injuries, it has been more than just a good season for the Broncos. This tournament really showed where they’re at and it showed the level they want and can get to.
“We played one of the best teams, probably, in the WAC in any sport,” Tichenor said about Fresno. “They’re like 15 or 16. They beat USC. You know it’s a monumental challenge to draw that hope and find a little magic and try to pull it off and everything, but unfortunately it didn’t happen.”
ADAM ADER
Sports Writer
