Texas A&M
Denver
A&M Gets Come-From-Behind Victory in Season Opener
Jan 24, 2009 | Women's Tennis
Jan. 24, 2009
COLLEGE STATION, Texas - The Texas A&M women's tennis team made an exciting comeback in its season opener, rallying from a 3-1 deficit to defeat Denver, 4-3, today at the George P. Mitchell Tennis Center.
"We win the doubles point, but our back was against the wall the whole time in the singles, and I commend the players for having the poise to stick it out," A&M coach Bobby Kleinecke said. "Nos. 2, 4, and 6 [singles], we had to win all three of those. They were the last ones on the court. That was a great display of some bright things to come."
A crowd of 567 braved the cold and wind as the No. 31 Aggies handed 28th-ranked Denver its first loss of the season after the Pioneers opened with a 7-0 sweep at Texas-San Antonio on Friday.
"The elements today were tough to battle," Kleinecke said. "We had a lot of adversity, from a coaching standpoint of not knowing the scores on any of the courts because we had the malfunction with the scoreboards, from the weather, the wind, the cold. The players had to deal with a lot of that, and it affects your game."
The Aggies won the first two doubles matches to take a 1-0 lead. The A&M duo of Stephanie Davidson (Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas) and Morgan Frank (Oldsmar, Fla.) raced to an 8-2 victory over Kyla Iwinski and Ute Schnoy at the No. 2 line, but the doubles point remained in doubt as the contests on the remaining two courts were evenly matched affairs.
A&M's Christina Amo (Fort Worth, Texas) and Ashley Turpin (New Braunfels, Texas) were trailing Annette Aksdal and Bhavani Tirumurti on Court 3 but then won the next three games to win the match, 9-7, and clinch the point for the Aggies.
Julia Bauregger and Mallory Voelker prevented a doubles sweep by the Aggies. The Denver pair trailed Elzé Potgieter (Bloemfontein, South Africa), 6-4, at the No. 1 line before reeling off four straight games to win the set, 8-6.
Denver immediately grabbed the momentum in singles as Schnoy downed Liles, 6-3, 6-3, at the No. 3 line, and Voelker topped Potgieter, 6-1, 6-2, at No. 1. Iwinski, the younger sister of former Aggie player Seva Iwinski, then gave the Pioneers a 3-1 lead with a 6-3, 6-3 victory against Sheri Olivier (Topeka, Kan.) at the No. 5 line.
The remaining three courts would all be decided in three sets, pushing the length of the overall match just over four and a half hours. Frank won her first set, 6-3, against Aksdal at the No. 2 line, but Aksdal evened the match after taking the second set, 6-4. Frank built a narrow 3-2 edge in the third set and then reeled off three straight games to win the match and put the Aggies within 3-2.
At the No. 4 line, freshman Lauren Santacroce (Spring, Texas) dropped her first set to Bauregger, 6-4, but took the second set by the identical score. In the final set, Santacroce broke serve to tie the score at 5-5 and then won the next two games, winning 13 consecutive points to close out the match.
In the decisive last match standing, Davidson defeated Tirumurti, 7-6 (1) in the first set at the No. 6 line, but Tirumurti held off Davidson, 7-3, in a second-set tiebreaker. The third set was tied at 2-2 when Davidson won the next for games to clinch the come-from-behind victory for the Aggies.
"I never give up, but I wasn't comfortable and confident that the match was in hand," Kleinecke said. "I knew some good things were going to have to start happening. The good thing that did happen was that they handled the pressure well. We talk about it all the time that you are going to get into a situation where you are going to have to step up and make something happen, and I thought that was the difference in those three matches."
The Aggies now hit the road for a pair of matches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles for the inaugural ITA Kickoff Weekend. A&M faces St. Mary's College Saturday at 10:30 a.m. (CST) and will take on either No. 10 USC or No. 4-seed Michigan State on Sunday.
The team to win both of its matches will join the winners from 14 other sites at the prestigious 16-team ITA National Team Indoor Championships, Feb. 12-15 in Madison, Wis. As host of the national indoors, the University of Wisconsin is automatically qualified for the 16-team national tournament.
(31) TEXAS A&M 4, (28) DENVER 3 January 24, 2009 George P. Mitchell Tennis Center At College Station, Texas Attendance: 567
Singles
1. Mallory Voelker (DEN) def. Elzé Potgieter (TAMU), 6-1, 6-2
2. Morgan Frank (TAMU) def. Annette Aksdal (DEN), 6-3, 4-6, 6-2
3. Ute Schnoy (DEN) def. Christi Liles (TAMU), 6-3, 6-2
4. Lauren Santacroce (TAMU) def. Julia Bauregger (DEN), 4-6, 6-4, 7-5
5. Kyla Iwinski (DEN) dev. Sheri Olivier (TAMU), 3-6, 6-3, 6-3
6. Stephanie Davidson (TAMU) def. Bhavani Tirumurti (DEN), 7-6 (1), 6-7 (3), 6-2
Doubles (A&M wins the point)
1. Bauregger/Voelker (DEN) def. Liles/Potgieter (TAMU), 8-6
2. Davidson/Frank (TAMU) def. Iwinski/Schnoy (DEN), 8-2
3. Christina Amo/Ashley Turpin (TAMU) def. Aksdal/Tirumurti (DEN), 9-7
Order of finish
Doubles: 2, 3, 1
Singles: 3, 1, 5, 2, 4, 6*
*Clinched match
Team records
Texas A&M: 1-0
Denver: 1-1
Players Mentioned
