The No. 30 SMU women’s tennis team put on their best tennis display of the young season with a 7-0 sweep of cross-town rival, No. 23 TCU, which took place on Wednesday, Feb. 17 in Fort Worth.
The Mustangs started off well, winning all three doubles matches for the point and they never looked back after that, reeling off six straight victories in singles for the match.
No. 3 doubles got things started, when the duo of freshman Edyta Cieplucha and senior Pavi Francis won the first match of the event, 8-1. The No. 2 doubles team, sophomore Marta Lesniak and freshman Shahzoda Hatamova, clinched the doubles point with an 8-5 victory.
The No. 1 doubles team of sophomore Aleksandra Malyarchikova and freshman Katerina Vankova finished the route by winning their match, 8-3.
“The doubles finally clicked,” said head coach Lauren Longbotham Meisner in an interview with smumustangs.com. ” We put new teams together and it worked which the momentum in the singles matches, gaining straight set victories from their freshmen, No. 5 Cieplucha and No. 3 Vankova, before Lesniak clinched the match at the No. 1 spot.
Lesniak, ranked No. 47 in the nation, easily won her first set, 6-1, before her opponent, Nina Munch-Soegaard, evened it up in the next set, 2-6. However, with her match on the line, Lesniak stepped it up and blew by her opponent for the victory and the match,
“Marta’s third set was the best I have seen her play at SMU,” Longbotham Meisner said. “She knew we needed the point and responded with a very focused and powerful set.”
The singles matches continued, though it was more for sportsmanship as the match had already been won by the Mustangs. No. 2 singles Malyarchikova faced a tough opponent in TCU’s No. 67 Kayla Duncan and had to play catch up after dropping the first set. Still, the sophomore fought back, tying the match in the second and winning it in the third set tiebreaker.
“Sasha [Malyarchikova] is a fighter,” Longbotham Meisner said. “She never gave up even though the team already had the win. She fights for every point no matter what the score and that showed in this match.”
