BATON ROUGE, La. - The No. 7 Vanderbilt women’s tennis team closed out its final road trip of the regular season with a 4-0 sweep over the No. 21 LSU Tigers.
With the squad’s victory, the Commodores’ own nine ITA top-25 victories and improve to 15-5 overall and 10-1 in Southeastern Conference play.
“We played a high energy match and competed really well today,” said head coach Geoff Macdonald. “We pushed them out of the doubles point. Everyone one the team, all nine positions, showed up today. We won on Friday against Texas A&M not playing our best tennis, but competing really well. Today competed and played well today, so it was a nice improvement.”
Vandy began its match against LSU with confident doubles play, taking courts three then two both by a score of 6-2. At the clinch VU’s 10th-ranked Astra Sharma and Emily Smith were down 3-4 to No. 24 Joana Valle Costa and Ryann Foster. All three Commodore tandems own just two losses apiece on the season.
In singles play, the ‘Dores came out to nab five of six first sets. The team’s three individual victories came on courts four, six then one with opponents taking three or less combined games per match.
Georgina Sellyn and No. 15 Sydney Campbell had tight first set competitions on courts five and two, with both student-athletes extending their leads late in the first set. Sellyn came out on top against Becca Weissmann, 6-3, while Campbell pulled off a 7-6 tiebreaker versus No. 102 Valle Coasta.
Freshman Emma Kurtz turned in the first singles victory for the black and gold, defeating Jessica Golovin 6-2, 6-1. Kurtz owns spotless SEC records on courts four (5-0) and five (3-0), and just one conference loss at No. 3.
Up 2-0, newly ranked No. 96 Fernanda Contreras generated the third point of the contest as well as the sophomore’s 25th win of the season and 55th career win. The Austin, Texas native allowed the fewest games on the day, overpowering Skylar Holloway, 6-1, 6-1 on court six.
Fourth-ranked Sharma clinched the win on court one, only allowing No. 34 Lewis one game in the first set and sealing the deal in the second, 6-2. The victory was the Aussie’s 25th of the season (25-6).
“We focus a lot on improving from week-to-week,” Macdonald said, “so focusing on the dual match format, momentum swings, how to handle emotional ups and downs for example. Right now were working on our focus and making practices shorter and crisper. We’re competing at a really high level right now as a team, and that’s something that’s getting better and better.”
Vanderbilt closes out the season at home next weekend, taking on South Carolina Friday at 3 p.m. and Florida Sunday at 11 a.m. Senior day festivities against the Gators are slated to begin at 10:45.
