The UW women’s tennis team continued blowing through opponents with two more wins added this weekend against New Mexico and Air Force.
The team has now won seven straight matches to improve their season record to 16-3 and a perfect 4-0 in the Mountain West.
“We’ve talked all year about how deep our line-up is,” head coach Dean Clower said. “We can win at any spot and it’s nice to have freshman be able to clinch for us, but kudos to Ana (Tkachenko) and all of the other players that bring it every day.”
The first matchup was in Laramie against the New Mexico Lobos, and the Cowgirls came out strong in the doubles competitions, taking two out of the three matches to earn an early point for the day. Magdelena Stencel and Milka Genkova defeated their matchup 7-4, and Tessa Van Der Pleog and Elisa Koonik secured the doubles point with a 6-4 win.
In the singles competitions, the Pokes took three out of the five completed matches to add three points to the score and a 4-2 win. Van Der Ploeg won the first singles matchup decidedly in two sets with scores of 6-4 and 6-1. New Mexico shot back with a win, but Wyoming held the lead with victories from Dorottya Jonas and Ana Tkachenko.
“We had some people drop matches but they still brought it,” Clower said. “This New Mexico team was hot coming in to the match today and have beat some tough teams in the conference. There are a few seniors on this team that beat us in the championship two years ago and our players remember that.”
The Air Force Falcons also came to Laramie to face the Cowgirls and the Falcons showed early life with two doubles wins and the point secured.
“We obviously haven’t lost the doubles point in a while, so it was a little different feel in the locker room in between,” Clower said. “The good thing was that ladies put the doubles loss on themselves, took responsibility and said that we’re going to get it done.”
In the singles competitions, Wyoming came out strong and won five straight, only surrendering the last match to bring the final score for the day to 5-2. Koonik won the first match in two sets with scores of 6-1 and 6-1. Stencel, Van Der Pleog and Tkachenko continued the onslaught with each winning in two sets. Genkova took the last win of the day for UW with commanding 6-1, 6-2 scores. Jonas narrowly lost in three sets during the last matchup, with scores of 5-7, 6-0, and 4-6.
“We’ve been talking about Air Force all season and how good they’ve been,” Clower said. “They are very well disciplined, well-coached and deeper than previous year’s. They added TJ (Fumagalli) to the line-up, who is a talented recruit, plus a solid senior at one (Chloe Forlini), so we knew that this was going to be a battle. Good job for our team to come off a tough match against New Mexico and bring it today as well.”
These two wins raised the Cowgirls’ win total to 16 on the season, which is the record for most single-season wins. The Cowgirls will have a chance to extend the season win record a game further with a matchup against Colorado State, which also marks the last game of the season. The matchup will also be senior day for Jonas and Talbert.
The match is set for Saturday, April 22 at 1 p.m. in the UW Indoor Tennis Courts.
