By: Brenna Jefferies
The men’s and women’s tennis teams are both in for tough seasons with multiple Division I opponents on each schedule. Recent matches and their upcoming schedule can attest to that.
This weekend the men’s tennis team was defeated by Rice University, 1-6, but defeated Division I Prairie View A&M, 4-0.
In the Rice match, the first loss of the season for the Wildcat men, redshirt freshman Hans Hach claimed the only victory with a singles win over Rice’s Philip Seifert, 6-3.
“The match against Prairie View A&M showed we were a little rusty. But soon we will be ready for conference and we are hoping to win nationals,” said Hach.
The following day the ACU men fell to Lamar University, 2- 5, to even up their overall record for the spring season at 2-2.
On the women’s front this past weekend, Division I Louisiana-Lafayette proved to be a formidable foe by defeating the Lady Wildcats, 1-6, in their first home match of the season.
“I thought going into it we could win it. Some of the matches were close. One, two and three singles were really close and two and three singles we could have won. I think we were right there with them,” said senior Lauren White.
Jaclyn Walker, a senior from Abilene, and Julia Mongin, a sophomore from France, won the No. 1 doubles match that proved to be the team’s only victory.
Despite the loss to Louisiana-Lafayette, the Lady Wildcats did not stay down for long, rebounding to defeat Tarleton State, 7-2. Though the TexAnns took an early 2-1 lead, ACU went on to dominate by winning all six singles matches. Freshmen Micah Hermsdorf and Emily Conrad both won matches to secure the victory over Tarleton.
“I think both teams need to play more matches,” Head Coach Hutto Jones said, “But the season is just getting started and there is a lot of room to improve and playing these tough teams gives us a real assessment of where we are.”
The Lady Wildcats hit the road to face four Oklahoma schools as the men take on Air Force Academy and Metro State in Colorado Springs, Colo.
