Tennis team ends fall season

Monday, October 26, 2009

The Jayhawks competed in two weekend tournaments — the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Regional tournament in Norman, Okla., and the KU Invitational at First Serve — and came out with a combined 11-19 record. Other than a 3-2 performance by junior Maria Martinez at the KU tournament, no team member posted a winning record.

In Norman, the doubles teams of Sara Lazarevic and Ekaterina Morozova and Erin Wilbert and Victoria Khanevskaya both opened play Thursday with first round losses. But both duos recovered from the early deficits and won their consolation rounds against Wichita State University and Saint Louis University.

On the singles side, sophomores Wilbert and Morozova recorded victories in the first round and then were eliminated in the second. Despite losing in the first round, freshman Lazarevic bounced back to win two consolation rounds against Minnesota and Saint Louis. She nearly got through the quarterfinals of the back draw, but a three-set loss to Oklahoma ended her run.

“Some games we played well, but I don’t think we put the package together for this tournament,” coach Amy Hall-Holt said.

Maybe the team didn’t finish as well as she hoped, but she was quick to point out that she wasn’t discouraged.

We did some really good things at regionals, but we still have a lot of growing to do,” Hall-Holt said. “Now the girls see where we need to be for spring. We had two freshmen and two sophomores so we probably had the youngest group there.”

Play in Lawrence also had its ups and downs. On a high note, Martinez kicked off the first day of competition with both a singles and doubles victory. After cruising to a 6-0, 6-2 victory against University of Missouri-Kansas City, she paired up with senior Kuni Dorn to dominate through a duo from Abilene Christian University, 8-2.

A second-round singles victory landed Martinez in the semifinal round of her bracket, but a 6-4, 6-4 loss to Missouri kept her from continuing.

Dorn was not quite as successful in the singles bracket. She began Friday with a three-set loss to Abilene Christian, and then suffered an elbow injury in the consolation round Saturday, which kept her from playing any more matches. She spent the rest of the weekend cheering for her teammates on the sidelines.

The other Jayhawk doubles team of junior Kate Goff and Dzuba tallied one victory together, but it took three tries to achieve it. The first two days resulted in losses to New Mexico and Abeline Christian, but they battled back to defeat Iowa State 8-4 Sunday.

Singles play for Dzuba gave her a taste of what might be to come during spring conference play. Besides one match against New Mexico, her other three matchups were against Big 12 opponents — one from Iowa State and two from in-state rival Kansas State.

The Wildcats prevailed both times, the last one being the final fall match for the Jayhawks.

It took three sets for Ana Gomez Aleman to defeat Dzuba, and each one was close. The rest of the Kansas team was already finished and supported Dzuba from the side of the court, but Aleman eventually prevailed to earn a 6-3, 4-6, 10-8 victory.

“It got the team cheering for me,” Dzuba said of the long match. “She was a good player and just stepped it up.”

When it was all said and done, assistant coach German Dalmagro had critical, yet supportive thoughts about the tournament.

“The weekend was positive,” Dalmagro said. “We saw some good things and some things we need to work on. It gave us a perspective of where we are and where we need to be. Now we can look forward to the off-season and work hard on individual improvement to get ready for the spring.”

With three months of off-season ahead of it, the squad will now have some time to focus on that improvement. The Jayhawks will open their spring season Jan. 30 at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

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