The Utah women’s tennis team competed in a pair of matches last weekend in California, taking on Cal and Stanford. Cal is ranked as the No. 1 team in the country and Stanford is another very solid program. The Utes knew they were going up against stiff competition, and despite the 0-2 outcome, Utah came away with some positives.
“You have to look at the victories inside of the losses,” Utah head coach Mat Iandolo said. “I felt like we were very competitive in some of the matches.”
Utah started off the weekend against the best team in the country in Cal, and the Golden Bears’ dominance showed as the Utes were swept 7-0 on the first day of competition. The Utes did compete for the doubles point, as freshman Taylor Calton and junior Luisa Gerstner Da Rosa won their matchup, but Utah ultimately fell in the third pairing to surrender that point, too.
“We knew it was going to be tough,” sophomore Margo Pletcher said. “Overall, we didn’t have the best day at Cal but we improved when we went to Stanford.”
Pletcher’s coach also noted similar feelings about Utah’s weekend.
“There were some really positive things that happened,” Iandolo said.
Utah concluded its weekend road trip with the match against the Cardinal. Though this contest yielded the same final result as the Cal match — a 7-0 sweep — Utah showed its ability to rebound from a tough defeat and make some more strides.
“With as young of a team as we have, you’re looking for mini-victories against these top two teams,” Iandolo said.
Utah did have a couple of these mini-victories against Stanford, one of which came from Pletcher. The Ute sophomore went up against one of the top individual performers in all of college tennis, Carol Zhao, and Pletcher was ready for the challenge. She took the first set from Zhao, making a statement. She dropped the second before making things interesting in the third set, ultimately falling in a 10-point tiebreaker.
“I felt pretty good about how I played in my match,” Pletcher said. “But when you’re playing someone that is as talented as she [Zhao] is, it’s hard to win two straight sets.”
Naturally, the Utes were hoping to have a little better of a weekend. As a team, however, Utah came away with a lot of good things to build off of.
“That’s what you’re trying to learn with a young team,” Iandolo said. “You’re not going to go from getting killed by a team one year and then beating them the next year. You slowly start being able to effectively compete against them and that is the first step to overcoming.”
Utah returns home this Thursday and will take on Fresno State at 1:30 pm MST.
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