Women?s Tennis Opens up SoCon Championships
4/20/2011 2:49:00 AM | Women's Tennis
STATESBORO, Ga. - The Georgia Southern Women's Tennis team (9-10, 3-7 SoCon) heads to Chattanooga and the Champions Club for the Southern Conference Championships. The Eagles face a familiar foe in Western Carolina (2-15, 1-9 SoCon). The Eagles and Catamounts met 10 days ago in the last match of the regular season. Georgia Southern and Western Carolina renew the series Wednesday, April 20th, in the first round at 10 a.m. The winner of the match faces second seeded UNC Greensboro Thursday, April 21st, at 10:30 a.m.
"We are looking forward to competing this week in Chattanooga," said Head Coach Amy Bonner. "I'm hoping that things will come together for us just in time for the tournament. We have been working hard these past few weeks to fine tune our singles and doubles play and to have the team feel confident about taking the courts on Wednesday."
Georgia Southern is 23-0 all-time against Western Carolina dating back to 1992. The Eagles have faced the Catamounts six previous times at the SoCon Championships since 1998. The last time both schools met in the SoCon Championships was 2008 when Georgia Southern won 4-0 to advance to the quarterfinals.
In their last meeting on April 10th, the Eagles swept through doubles and won five of the six matches in singles play for a 6-1 victory over Western Carolina. In singles action, Ashley Hungerford (Clearwater, Fla.) won in straight sets 6-0, 6-0 on court five. Alessandra Dzuba (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.) and Ali Beavers (Kingsport, Tenn.) won their matches at the No. 6 and No. 2 seed, respectively, by default. Paola Garrido (Vigo, Spain) downed Izabella Glinska 6-0, 6-2 at the top of the lineup, while Melanie Rolle (Gainesville, Fla.) won in three sets on court three.
Beavers' leads Georgia Southern with 12 total wins in singles action, all but one coming at the No. 2 seed. At No. 5, Hungerford is 8-2 on the season. In doubles play, Garrido and Caitlin Kitchen (Kennesaw, Ga.) are 5-2 at the top of the lineup and 4-1 in conference play.
Western Carolina is currently on a nine-match losing streak, falling 7-0 in two of its last three contests. Karen Jiménez has guided the Catamounts with eight victories at No. 4 singles.
Fans can follow Eagle Women's Tennis at GeorgiaSouthernEagles.com/wtennis and receive short updates at facebook.com/GSAthletics or twitter.com/GSAthletics. Scores of matches are posted at twitter.com/GSScores.
