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SPORTS
| UPDATED JAN. 28
Tennis
Rain causes cancellation of weekend
matches
The men’s team won three
of the matches played, while the women won one and lost a second.
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| The Shorthorn: Brandon Wade |
| Biology junior Jitka Vetrovcova reaches
out as far as she can to hit the ball during practice
Monday afternoon at the tennis courts. Weather caused
weekend matches to be canceled. |
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By Dustin
Eberhart
The Shorthorn staff
The tennis teams’ road to a perfect conference season started
on a less-than-perfect day.
Light weekend rain caused UTA’s Sunday matches to be canceled,
with the women facing UT-El Paso and the men traveling to Sherevport,
La., to face Centenary College. On Saturday, both teams began their
matches against visitor St. Louis University, but slippery courts
ended the day for everyone. Despite the outcome, UTA coaches were
able to evaluate the teams’ progress.
“Although the rain caused us to end early, something good did
come out of the St. Louis match — all three men’s teams
played good doubles,” men’s coach Patric DuBois said.
“But also, on the same note, we didn’t get to play any
singles — which doesn’t help going into our match Wednesday.”
The men’s team won the three scheduled doubles matches.
Playing in the No.1 spot, Baylor University transfer Nathan McGregor
and freshman Sandy Farquharson beat Lance Vodicka and Ikaika Jobe
8-6. UTA’s David Corrie and Niels Buksik, the No. 2 doubles
team won 8-3 over St. Louis’ Taylor Curran and Tom de Larzac.
The third Maverick team, seniors Javier Carillo and Alon Goldshuv,
completed the UTA sweep with an 8-5 win over Thomas Kwong and Michael
Hoosien.
The Mavs are scheduled to play at home against Texas Christian University
at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday. TCU, which beat St. Louis 6-1 Friday, comes
into the match ranked 34th nationally by www.collegetennisonline.com.
“TCU is going to be a tough first match, so to speak. It really
is our first match now since the cancellations over the weekend,”
DuBois said.
The inclement weather had a different effect for the women’s
team.
“The weather helped a lot,” women’s coach Christian
Wassmer said. “I was missing two of my starters ... so the
team was kind of depleted.”
Wassmer said that in addition to the short-handed team, the women
were able to gain experience playing in poor weather conditions.
“It was very cold and very windy,” he said. “This
will prepare them for the future if we were to run into this situation
again.”
In the two matches the women did finish, UTA’s No. 1 team,
sophomore Annemarie Lenze and freshman Anete Rozkalne beat St. Louis
University’s Melisa Lemus and Vicki Zielinski 8-2, a team Wassmer
described as really good.
“The bright spot this weekend was definately Annemarie and
Anete’s doubles,” Wassmer said. “For a team that’s
never played together, they played extremely well.”
Jitka Vetrovcova and Ella Goldshuv, the No. 2 women’s team,
lost to the Billikens’ Sandra Simunic and Amy O’Handley
8-5, UTA’s only loss of the day, in addition to defaulting
a match because of two injured women’s players.
Neither UTA nor St. Louis will be credited with a win or loss because
neither team reached the four-point mark necessary for the match
to count.
The men are set to make up their match against the Centenary Gents,
an associate member of the Southland Conference in men’s tennis
only, on Feb. 14 at the UTA Tennis Center, while the women’s
match against UT-El Paso will not be made up.
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