Senior Day draws mixed results for tennis squads | The Triangle

Senior Day draws mixed results for tennis squads

Freshman Lea Winkler returns a shot April 6 against NJIT. Winkler went on to lose her singles match, 2-6, 3-6. The women's team won its Senior Day matchup at Vidas Courts, 4-3, while the men's team fell, 2-5. (Andrew Pellegrino)
Freshman Lea Winkler returns a shot April 6 against NJIT. Winkler went on to lose her singles match, 2-6, 3-6. The women’s team won its Senior Day matchup at Vidas Courts, 4-3, while the men’s team fell, 2-5. (Andrew Pellegrino)

The Drexel tennis teams ended up with a split April 6, Senior Day, against the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The split decisions saw the women’s team narrowly skirt past its NJIT counterparts by one with a score of 4-3.

Kicking off the doubles matches, seniors Zeynep Mafa and Marcela Rosales cruised past the NJIT doubles, 8-3. The victories didn’t end there; in the next doubles match, teammates sophomore Erin Bowsher and junior Nicole Pivonka sealed the doubles point for the women’s team with an 8-2 win.

The doubles point became especially valuable as NJIT forced a 3-3 split in the singles matches that followed. NJIT came out of the gate with the first win where Mafa could not successfully break through despite coming close, falling in straight sets, 6-4, 6-3.

The women’s team came back and countered with two straight wins highlighted by straight set wins by Pivonka, which included a shutout, 6-0, 6-2. One of the two freshmen on the team, Fiorella Coria, ensured a win for Drexel when she defeated her NJIT opponent in straight sets, 6-1, 6-2.

The win over NJIT marked the fourth consecutive victory for the Dragons and pushed their season record to an impressive 13-3, including an outstanding 10-1 record at home.

Up next is a game against the Blue Hens of the University of Delaware in Newark, Del., April 12, where they’ll look to push the win streak to five as well as upgrading their 3-2 road record.

The men’s team, on the other hand, suffered a tough 5-2 loss to the Highlanders.

It looked promising early on in the doubles series when teammates junior Alex Fioravante and sophomore Xabier Saavedra eked out an 8-6 victory. But things quickly fizzled in the next two matches, which ended in losses. Senior Skyler Davis and junior Dan Koehler lost in the second doubles match, 8-6.

Already down one point, the team looked to singles matches for retribution. Like the doubles match, it started out well with junior Badr Ouabdelmoumen picking up a quick 6-3 set win. However, the men’s team proceeded to win only one more of the next five singles matches.

The painful part of the four losses was that three of them went to a full three sets. Davis lost his third set by 6-4, Fioravante lost his 6-2 and junior Daniel Hansen lost his 10-6.

Even though there are no moral victories in sports, the teams weren’t exactly matched talent-wise, as the score might have indicated. With the loss, the men’s team drops to a .500 record of 8-8. Like the women’s team, they will hit the road and travel to Delaware this Saturday for their next game. The task is a bit tough as the road-home split is very day-and-night with the team since they’re 6-2 at home while 2-6 on the road.