The UNF women’s tennis team tallied its first loss of the season against the College of Charleston 4-3, which doesn’t seem too devastating, but it means a lot to the team.
It was the Ospreys’ first home loss since April 8, 2008.
The women’s tennis team has gone above and beyond the net this year with a season record of 6-1, as the men’s team is 7-3 at press time. But the College of Charleston proved to be too much for the Ospreys to continue their flawless home game record.
The UNF women’s tennis team came up short of defeating the College of Charleston Feb. 21 at the UNF Tennis Complex. The Charleston Cougars picked up a close 4-3 win over the Ospreys, after CofC picked up early victories in the second and third doubles spots.
Cougars junior Kinsey Casey and senior Anna Lee Evans won the tiebreaker over UNF sophomore Danielle Day and junior Lauren Holton. And Casey also defeated her singles opponent, Ospreys freshman Melanie Aguirre, in the No. 4 spot with a score of 6-2, 6-4.
UNF sophomore Aline Berkenbrock and senior Raquel Castro were able to defeat CofC’s Emma Haymen and Holly Dowse 8-5 in the first doubles set. In addition, Berkenbrock followed up the victory with another win against Dowse in the singles category.
Berkenbrock tallied scores of 6-4, 5-7, 6-3 in the three sets against Dowse, but it wasn’t enough to seal a team win against CofC. But I’m still having trouble understanding how CofC was able to defeat a team that could probably serve a tennis ball from an impeccable distance and nail a moving target.
“We played a really tough match today,” said UNF assistant coach Ronnie Sang after the match. “We just fell short of the win. Hopefully we will learn from our mistakes as we prepare for the next match.”
The UNF women’s tennis team hasn’t had a losing season since 2005, as far as online records show, but maybe the Ospreys’ dominance goes further back than that. The same holds true for the men’s team, as they have held esteemed winning records throughout the past few years.
This is something of which the tennis teams should be proud, especially since they play some pretty challenging teams like Florida Atlantic, Auburn, Mississippi, UCF and Indiana. I think what happened against CofC was just blip on the radar, and let’s just hope it doesn’t happen again, especially because we play the Cougars at the start of every season.
This year’s season started with the sixth annual College of Charleston Invitational. The tennis team starts every season with this invitational, but the Ospreys can’t seem to gain enough knowledge of the Cougars tennis team to come up with a win when they play it later in the season.
The Cougars held the 72nd spot Feb. 12 for the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s ranking scale. They fell off the scale a little less than a week later, but CofC is the defending Southern Conference Champion. And after defeating the Ospreys, the Cougars’season record improved to 2-3.
The 6-1 record for the UNF women’s tennis team is by far superior, but as for its flawless record of no home game losses in almost two years, it looks like UNF will have to start from scratch.
