Women’s Tennis Travels for Conference Match Against EKU

Kaitlin Cordes, Staff Reporter

The women’s tennis team will travel to Kentucky on Friday to take on the Eastern Kentucky Colonels in one of their two remaining regular season matches.

The Panthers are looking to add to their 6-2 Ohio Valley Conference record as well as their 12-6 overall record. Eastern is coming into the matchup off a 6-1 win over Jacksonville State.

The Colonels show similar records as they sit at 12-9 on the season and 7-1 in the conference.

Eastern Kentucky dropped a match to Tennessee-Martin last weekend as the Skyhawks fended off the Colonels, 4-3.

Tennessee-Martin jumped out to an early lead (1-0) after the Skyhawks won two doubles contests to take the point.

The Colonels went on to win just half of the singles matchups.

Laura Argente competed against Tennessee-Martin’s Sarah Candeloro and took the match with a pair of 6-3 set scores.

Corentine Bodin saw a close matchup with Asel Jumamukhambetova. Bodin ultimately edged her Skyhawk opponent 6-3, 7-6 (7-2).

Margaux Lacroix took her match with Burcu Tari to three sets; Lacroix ended up taking home the victory with a 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 score.

Viktorija Demcenkova, Marina Marti and Raquel Montalvo each took home a loss in their respective matches. Marti and Demcenkova both had tight matches but ended up losing in the third set.

The Colonels did not take home any doubles victories as the Skyhawks earned a sweep of the three matches.

Hitomi Naito and Jemima Potter defeated Demcenkova and Lacroix 6-0 in the No. 2 matchup.

Tari and Andrea Plantada Cortes rolled past the Colonels’ Marti and Bodin, winning 6-2.

Argente and Montalvo’s contest against Candeloro and Jumamukhambetova went unfinished by default.

The Panthers dropped last season’s match with Colonels 5-2 on the Darling Courts.

Eastern’s two wins for the day came from sophomore Grace Summers and alumna Sephora Boulbahaiem.

Summers was pushed to three sets by Marti in the No. 3 competition, but Summers came out on top with a 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 win.

The Colonels breezed past the Panthers in most of the remaining singles matches posting many 6-0 and 6-1 set scores.

Eastern Kentucky took all three doubles matches as well.

At the time of last season’s match, the Colonels posted a 9-1 conference record while Eastern sat at 7-3.

Right now, Eastern Kentucky is running on a one-game losing streak and has an 8-3 home play record.

The Panthers also have a winning 7-5 away record so far this season.

In the OVC, Eastern Kentucky is in a three-way tie with Southern Illinois-Edwardsville and Tennessee-Martin for the No. 1 slot. Eastern Illinois is in second place with a 0.667 winning percentage.

 

Kaitlin Cordes can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].