A string of tough teams has come in the U women’s tennis team’s schedule as the Utes fight toward the Mountain West Conference Championships.
Over the weekend, three nationally ranked teams came into the Eccles Tennis Center to face the Utes.
The No. 12-ranked Washington Huskies, No. 59 Kansas Jayhawks and the No. 27 Washington State Cougars defeated the Utes, which ended the Utes’ two-match winning streak.
The Huskies swept the Utes 7-0, and are 9-1 on the season. The closest matchup was junior Cassie Kasteler’s loss to Erin Hoe, 6-4, 2-6, 7-6.
“We wanted to use this opportunity to break out into national rankings, but we played extremely hard and I’m proud of our team,” U coach John Tsumas said.
The ordeal of facing tough teams was far from over for the Utes, though.
The Kansas match, at least, was much closer, as the Utes were downed 4-3. Kasteler kept up the good play, as she defeated Christi Wagenarr, 6 2 6-1. However, the doubles teams could not get it done and the Utes barely lost the match.
Finally, if you look at the Washington State score, which was 7-0, you might think that the Utes were completely dominated but that was not the case.
“We had plenty of opportunities to upset the Cougars,” Tsumas said. “We held two small leads in the doubles with [Irini] Kotoglou and [Ellen] Svensson. They took an early 3-2 lead against a nationally ranked opponent. Kasteler and [Allison] Hansen had a 2-1 early lead, but just couldn’t hold on. I was especially pleased with [Linn] Ronnberg and [Sheri] Esrock. They were down 6-1 early in the match, but fought back to 5-6.”
The road does not get much easier for the Utes, as they will face Idaho State on March 8 and then No. 46-ranked SMU will come to town to face the Utes on March 10.