Freshman women’s tennis player Srishti Slaria was named Ohio Valley Conference player of the week for her performance over the weekend at Evansville.

She was named OVC player of the week, as she was the only Panther to not lose a match in doubles or singles play. Slaria was victorious in her match against Sarah Baron of Indiana 7-5, 6-2.

Slaria played at the No. 5 spot over the weekend. She was leading in her singles match at Evansville 6-0, 3-0 before the match was called early. This was Slaria’s first OVC player of the week honor of her career.

Slaria and her doubles partner junior Kamile Stadalninkaite were also the only Panther pairing go undefeated over the weekend.

While Slaria’s singles matches were won fairly easily, her and Stadalninkaite had to fight a little bit more to get the doubles victories.

The two started the weekend with a 6-1 win of the Evansville duo and followed that up with 7-6, 7-5 wins against the Indiana doubles team.

Slaria’s dominating weekend improved her singles record to 3-2. She is one of six Panthers who have winning singles records. The other two sit at .500. As a team, the Panthers are 34-18 overall in singles matches.

Her doubles record improved to an astounding 5-1 record. She and Stadalninkaite have been partners the whole year. The team sits at 17-7 in doubles records.

The other duos include sophomore Grace Summers and senior Hannah Kimbrough and senior Ali Foster and junior Kelly Iden.

Summers and Kimbrough have a record of 5-3 and Foster and Iden are currently 6-3.

The Panthers are 5-4 through the first nine matches of the year playing under first year head coach Emily Wang. Eastern hasn’t begun conference play yet.

Eastern will start conference play with Southeast Missouri March 18 and Tennessee-Martin March 19. The Panthers will be playing at home on the Darling Courts. They will play six of their 10 OVC matchups on their home courts.

Sean Hastings can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].