Tennis

Vanderbilt University is going to compete in ITA Kickoff

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The Vanderbilt University women’s tennis team prepares for the ITA Kickoff Weekend, which will be played in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today, in fact, the Dores – ranked No.25 – will face No.17 Tennessee.

Vanderbilt will next face either No. 21 University of Miami or No. 18 University of Southern California tomorrow (Saturday, Jan. 27). Vanderbilt will return home to face the University of Memphis on Saturday, Feb. 3 at 11 a.m. .

Vanderbilt’s last game was Sunday, losing to Southern Methodist University in the first doubleheader of the spring season. It was a thrilling match: Vanderbilt fought hard but was defeated 4–3 on aggregate, losing the deciding point in doubles.

Tennessee has a perfect 4-0 record for the season thus far, having defeated Furman, Chattanooga, Wake Forest and Bellarmine. Miami (1-0) will look for its second win of the season after a 7-0 win over Florida International University last week to start the season. Southern California holds a 2-0 record for the spring season thus far, after competing against the University of California Irvine and Loyola Marymount on Thursday.

What happened last Sunday

As mentioned above, the Dores lost to Southern Methodist University 4-3 in its first doubleheader of the season.

Bridget Stammel and Valeria Ray won their doubles match but the Dores dropped the other two, then headed to singles. Sonya Macavei won 6-0, 6-2 at No. 6 singles, Anessa Lee won in straight sets and Holly Staff won the first set on court 5.

Célia-Belle Mohr bounced back after losing the first set in a tiebreaker, winning the second set and taking the third, leaving Vanderbilt just one game away from victory. Stammel recovered from the first set loss to take the second and force a third set. But the Mustangs held on to win a tie-break in the third set 9-7 to seal the victory at home.

Coach Aleke Tsoubanos analyzed after the match: “Congratulations to SMU, they fought hard and played well today. They pulled off three 3-set matches and played a more aggressive double point than us, so credit to them. It’s not often that both teams have match points to win the doubles overall, this would have been a heartbreaker for some and unfortunately we found ourselves on the wrong side of it today. We will have to move on and give ourselves a good week of practice to prepare for another test against Tennessee on Friday in the ITA Kickoff.”

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