The Falcon tennis team had their first match and victory of the season on Thursday, facing off against the Chicago State Cougars 6-1, followed by another victory against the Xavier Musketeers on Sunday afternoon 4-3.

On Thursday, even though this was the first match of the year, freshman Marta Bettinelli could tell the work that they put in has paid off.

“I mean, I feel like we’ve all improved a lot since last semester, we worked a lot, we worked really hard,” Bettinelli said.

Chicago State struggled against the Falcons on Thursday, losing by the final score of 6-1.

Falcons head coach Stephanie Dalmacio saw the fight in her team and was very proud with the outcome.

“I thought we played really good, I think the girls battled on every court, and that’s what we’ve been talking about, that’s what the season is going to be about,” Dalmacio said.

Dalmacio does understand that this is only the first match of the year and knows it will get tougher later on in the season, but was happy with the compete level on the court and, in her mind, that’s what’s important.

“There is going to be a lot of close matches, you know, it’s going to be very competitive every time, but the goal is to compete, to battle every time and they did great with that today.”

Compared to last year’s squad, Dalmacio sees a whole different team.

“It’s really a 360 (from last year),” she said. “Not only having players to put on the court, you know, last year we only had five players. With a full team now, it’s nice to have people to put out on the court.”

On Sunday, the battle continued throughout the matches, but nobody knew that better than sophomore Ayumi Sasaki. She was the final match to finish, as it was the match that would determine if the Falcons would win or lose against Xavier. After losing the first set 7-5, she finished the match, winning the final two of three sets 6-4 and 6-4 and chalking up another victory for the Falcons.

Sasaki prevailed, but isn’t quite sure how she was able to do it:

“Start of the second set, my legs weren’t really moving. But my coach reminded me to move my feet,” Sasaki said. “We were the underdog, so we had nothing to lose, so just play my game one by one.”

Xavier was tough throughout the match, but Sasaki was very pleased with not just her performance, but her teammates as well.

“All the courts, I think they did really good,” Sasaki said. “We won as a team.”

Dalmacio couldn’t have agreed more with that Sasaki’s assessment.

“I mean incredible, really,” Dalmacio said. “You know, from the doubles point, we knew that the doubles point was very, very important today.

Dalmacio eluted to why that point was of such importance because of who they were playing.

“They’re a very competitive team, we’re the underdog in this case,” Dalmacio said.

One advantage Dalmacio felt her team had was being the home team.

“But we’re at home, we took pride to be here.” Dalmacio said. “That was incredible, it just helps so much, and we’re hopefully trying to get more people out here. The girls feel the energy and that is halfway there, you know, on the win.”

Compared to the last match against Chicago State, Xavier posed a much tougher test, but Dalmacio understands that this season and every season is a grind.

“They’re definitely much tougher,” Dalmacio said. “Chicago State was a good first match at home, but we knew the big one at home was this weekend, it was one at a time, but again, it’s about competing, it’s about fighting hard out there.”

Through all that, even with a win, Dalmacio sees things the team and her need to work on, but she’s going to let them enjoy this one for a while.

“After their day, their well-deserved day off here, there’s some work in singles that we need to be doing,” Dalmacio said. “Coming forward, stepping inside the court, not being afraid and not hesitating on taking those balls. They’re good at it, they’re just not as confident as I would like them to be.”

“(We’re) just very, very happy to have gotten the win here, they just played incredible and competed so hard.”

The Falcons next game will take place next Saturday at the Perrysburg Tennis Center where they will face off against the Youngstown State Penguins.