The Falcon tennis team continued their road trip Saturday in Cleveland, Ohio, where they took on the Cleveland State Vikings. However, their winning streak came to an end, falling to the Vikings by the overall score of 4 – 3.
The Falcons were unable to gain the first point of the match, as they fell in two out of three doubles matches 6 -3 and 6 – 3. However, junior Polina Radeva and sophomore Ayumi Sasaki did manage to get one victory in doubles by winning 6 – 3, but it was not enough to get on the board.
In singles rounds, Junior Paula Comella won 6 – 3 and 6 -3 in two sets, sophomore Marharita – Sophia Tavpash also won 6 – 3 and 6 – 3 in two sets, followed by a hard-fought battle with freshman Marta Bettinelli losing her first set 6 – 4, but bouncing back in the next two sets, defeating her opponent 6 – 4 and 7 – 6.
However, losing that first doubles point proved to be too costly in the end for Falcons after only gaining three points in singles, while the Vikings also got three points, leading to the final score of 4 – 3.
While Coach Stephanie Dalmacio was disappointed in the loss, she sees plenty of room for improvement from her team, but fatigue seems to be a big factor.
“Today didn’t go our way,” Dalmacio said. “It was sort of like a challenging match because we’re starting to feel a little physically and mentally here as we go forward in the season.”
Dalmacio was quick to point out that while fatigue appeared to be an issue with her team, the Vikings deserve the credit.
“Cleveland State deserved the win. They battled harder and deserved to win, really,” Dalmacio said. “They played very good doubles and played very smart doubles.”
With every loss, Dalmacio uses that as a learning experience for her young team and this will be no different.
“Two things that I think will be our focus this week is definitely serves. We had one too many double faults today throughout the matches, which didn’t help us,” Dalmacio said. “The other one is still trying to get the girls to move forward a little bit more at the net, so those were two things that we really couldn’t execute today and will be definitely working on that this week.”
The Falcons have two matches next weekend prior to spring break, where they will take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in South Bend, Indiana on Saturday afternoon, followed by the Detroit Titans in Detroit, Michigan on Sunday evening. But despite the fatigue of her team, she wants to be ready.
“We have some very tough matches coming up,” Dalmacio said. “The preparation needs to happen before and on a daily basis. These are the matches you learn from, just as we learned from this one today.
