The men’s and women’s tennis teams traveled to compete in the ITA Tennis Regional Championships last weekend through earlier this week.
The women played at Baylor University, with matches ranging from Thursday to Monday, while the men played at Texas A&M University in College Station from Friday to Monday. Both teams competed against high-level players from schools including University of Texas, University of Texas in Arlington and Baylor.
The men’s team struggled over the weekend in singles play. Only Brad Gleason, freshman from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, who defeated Hunter Holman of Texas Tech University, 6-4, 6-3, and, and Nico Agritelley, sophomore from Dallas, who beat Nicholas Melott of Texas Tech, 6-3, 6-0, won a singles match, but both would go on to lose the next game they played.
The team was successful in doubles play, though. Agritelley, and his partner, Guilherme Gesser, senior from Florianópolis, Brazil, defeated Texas A&M University in the quarterfinal match, 8-5, and moved on to the semifinals before losing against TCU, 8-2. The men’s doubles team of Paul Domanski, freshman from New Braunfels, and Marco Bensley, junior from Stellenbosch, South Africa, reached Round 16 before losing to Baylor University, 8-6.
“This just showed us that we do have what it takes to compete with some of the top Division I schools,” Agritelley said. “So we’re going to take that and use it towards our future tournaments, knowing that we can hang with anyone in college tennis.”
The women’s team was more successful in singles play with wins from multiple players including Lucile Pothier, freshman from Mouxy, France, Erin Walker, sophomore from Abilene, and Brittney Reed, senior from Richland, Washington.
Pontier went all the way to the Round of 16, beating Jessica Birowski of the UTA in the Round of 32, 6-4, 0-6, 6-4, before losing in her next match to the tournaments No. 1 seed, Addison Breaunna of UT, 6-0, 6-4. Reed lost her first match to Houston’s Despoina Vogasari, the tournament’s No. 7 seed and overall winner, 6-0, 6-4. Reed went on to reach the quarterfinals of the women’s consolation round, losing to Lindsey Hodge of Rice 7-6, 6-2.
In doubles, Reed and Walker managed to make it to quarterfinals. Pothier and her partner, Kaysie Hermsdorf, junior from Spring, defeated fellow Wildcats Ansley Boarman, sophomore from Missouri City, and Nada Marjanovic, junior from Ontario, Canada, in the in the women’s consolation quarterfinals, 8-4, before falling to Rice’s No. 5 tournament duo in the semifinals, 8-3.
“We all competed really well this weekend,” Agritelley said. “We knew the competition was going to be really tough, and we did really well.”
Both teams will travel to Tyler for the Tyler Invitational starting Oct. 24.
