| Junior Holly Phillips continued her winning ways in both singles and doubles play on Saturday. |
SAN ANTONIO ? The UTSA women’s tennis team dropped their second Southland Conference match of the season in heart-breaker fashion, 4-3 to Sam Houston State on Saturday.
The Roadrunners' second loss in their last three outings sent their overall record to 12-6 and 6-2 in league play this spring.
The Bearkats (8-6, 3-3 SLC) jumped out to the early 1-0 lead by serving up doubles wins at the top two spots.
Senior Karen Scida and freshman Micaela Silva lost their No. 1 match, 8-4, to Irina Sotnikova and Peta Taylor, while senior Monika Drabkova and sophomore Caroline Dedering fell, 8-2, to Giorgia Pozzan and Paty Manzur at No. 2. The junior-senior combo of Holly Phillips and Nathalie Wallin picked up a win at No. 3, knocking out Stasa Vujosevic and Eleonora Kuruc, 8-4, for their ninth win in a row.
Phillips got UTSA on the board with her 14th consecutive singles triumpg, a 6-2, 6-1 straight-sets win over Manzur at No. 4. The Bearkats went back ahead when Taylor defeated Drabkova at No 3, 6-3, 6-2. Silva dropped the first set of her No. 6 match with Lilit Martirosyan, 6-4, but she rebounded to take the last two, 6-4, 6-2, to knot the contest at two. The Roadrunners then took a short-lived 3-2 lead when Dedering defeated Kuruc at No. 5, 7-6 (8-6), 6-2. Wallin lost her first set to Pozzan at No. 2, 6-2, but the Stockholm, Sweden native, battled back to take the second stanza in a tiebreak, 7-6 (7-2). However, Pozzan outlasted Wallin in the third, winning the set, 6-1, which tied things back up at three.
The match came down to the No. 1 singles contest between Scida and Sotnikova, which already was in the third set. Sotnikova took the first set, 6-0, with Scida fighting back to take the second, 7-6, (9-7). Scida broke serve to knot things up at four, but Sotnikova broke right back to take the 5-4 advantage. Scida fought off a pair of match points, but the third time was the charm for Sotnikova, as she served out the match to take the final set, 6-4, to remain undefeated in conference singles play.
“I’m not unhappy with how we played today,” head coach Erin Boisclair said. “They are a very good team, top to bottom, and their No. 1 doubles team is 20-2 this season and their No. 1 singles is 21-1. I felt like we really fought hard with them and, if a couple of points here and there went our way, it may have turned out differently. The important thing is that we have another conference matchup tomorrow, so we to shake off the loss and get focused again.”
UTSA will take the court again at 10 a.m. on Sunday when it hosts Stephen F. Austin on Senior Day.