Game, set, match.
That was all it took for the Falcon tennis team to overcome Ball State Saturday in a hard fought 4-3 victory.
“We knew that coming in here, to play Ball State, was going to be a pretty tough match because they have always been our biggest rivals besides Toledo and Miami,” Gaby Coello said. Head coach Penny Dean prepared the Falcons well against the rival Cardinals.
“They haven’t been really doing that great,” Coello said. “Usually they are very good and it’s very hard to beat them. This year they are just not having a very great season, so it’s a big opportunity for us to beat them.”
The Falcons, however, started out by losing the first point of the match, the doubles point.
“We lost the doubles point again,” Dean said. “We feel like we are always close.”
BG did win one of their doubles matches, the No. 3 doubles pair of Heidi Romer and Andrew Meister defeated BSU’s Alyce Zollman and Kara Sullivan.
However, the Falcons have struggled all season long with their doubles and Dean was not too worried.
“It was a huge win,” Dean said. “Again we played great singles.”
As the singles action went under way Susie Schoenberger was the first Falcon off the court playing at the No. 2 singles position. She had no trouble defeating Ball State’s Jenny Batty in straight sets, 6-0, 6-3.
Schoenberger’s victory tied the match at 1-1.
Right behind her was Lisa Maloney at the No. 1 singles match, who lost in straight sets to the Cardinals’ Melissa Roach, giving Ball State the upper hand.
The next match to finish went in the Cardinal’s favor as BSU’s Lisa Brooks defeated Cameron Benjamin in straight sets. The Falcons now found themselves trailing the Cardinals 3-1. However, a few minutes later BG’s Alyson Gabel came off the court victorious after defeating Ball State’s Jill Wieman to cut the Cardinal’s lead.
Finally, the two deciding matches were Coello and Romer. “Heidi and Gaby were the last two matches left on and we needed to win both of those points,” Dean said. “Heidi and Gaby both had to be extremely patient in their games, especially in the third set. They kind of rose above how they normally like to play. They both like to hit the ball harder, but the styles of the opposing players and wind didn’t allow them to do that.”
Coello was the first one of the remaining two off the court. She defeated BSU’s Susan Kelley, 6-2, 6-7 (7), 7-5.
“I was very excited I won,” Coello said. “I knew if I lost, we lost the match. I think I was serving very well. I [was] a very hard day to play because it’s so windy and it [was] very sunny, so it [was] hard to serve on one side.”
Then, finally, after over three hours of match play Romer came off the court victorious defeating Ball State’s Zollman to give the Falcons a 4-3 win over the Cardinals.
Romer dropped the opening set in a tiebreaker, but came back for a 6-2 win the in second set. In the third set, Romer started off with a 4-1 lead, but Zollman tied it up a 4-4. Romer came back wining the next two sets to defeat Zollman 6-4.
“Heidi came through. She was very mentally tough,” Dean said. “I think, overall, we used the wind to our advantage. We’re used to playing here, so it becomes an advantage for us.” With the victory, the Falcons improve to 8-10 overall and 3-4 in Mid-American Conference action. The visiting Cardinals drop to 7-11 and 1-6, respectively.
“Every match is so critical,” Dean said. “It was a hard fought team victory.”
The victory also moves the Falcons up in the MAC.
“It was a huge win because this puts us in a position to be fifth place in the MAC, which makes us in the top half, which is a huge improvement over last year,” Dean said. “We were picked seventh going in, so it’s kind of a battle cry for us to do better than that.”
