Women's Results | Men's Results
FORT WORTH, Texas – For the first time in program history, four student-athletes from the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's tennis program advanced to the main draw after the qualifiers at ITA Regionals, Texas Region. The men were highlighted by an appearance in the finals of a singles flight by senior
Matthieu Peres at the UTSA Invitational.
For the women, freshman
Sofia Pinto made it the furthest by reaching the round of 32 in the main draw. It came after she defeated UT Arlington's Nika Novikova in straight sets 6-2, 6-2. Pinto, along with junior
Emma Aucagne, earned a bye into the main draw for having high UTR rankings.
Freshmen
Palina Saulevich and
Anais Brion each had to win two matches in the preliminaries to make it to the main draw. Saulevich picked up victores over Texas State and UTRGV, while Brion notched wins over Texas State and Houston.
"The Texas region is the toughest region in the nation and we're very proud of our high character hard fighting girls! Anais and Polina show tremendous heart and toughness, and all of our girls competed incredibly hard! Great team effort the way they pulled each other through and great coaching by Coach
Olga Bazhanova and Coach
Aurelien Tave! We are going to keep chopping wood, working hard on the right things, and coming every day with great attitude and effort," said head coach
Steve Moore.
In doubles, juniors
Naomi Moi McKenzie and
Valeria Cherfus tallied an 8-2 victory over a duo from Tarleton State to reach the round of 32.
On the men's side, the Islanders sent a trio of student-athletes to compete at UTSA. Peres knocked off Kabeer Kapasi 7-6 (4), 6-3 from Rice in the quarterfinals before ousting Tiago Torres 3-6, 7-5, 6-1 from UTSA in the semifinals. In the championship, Peres dropped a match that came down to the wire 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (7) to Casper Christensen from the University of Miami.
Freshmen
Tomas Quesada Perez and
Lucas Schurdevin each registered a win. Perez defeated Daichi Akiyoshi from UT Arlington 6-1, 7-6 (4), while Schurdevin outlasted Antoine Martin-Thiriat from Nicholls 6-2, 6-7 (4), 6-4.
"I'm incredibly proud of Matt, Tomas and Lucas! They competed so hard and they're so coachable. These fall tournaments are great because they expose things you need to work on, facets of the game you need to add and things we need to improve. These guys are so motivated and committed, and it's fun to coach guys like that. They competed as hard as you can ask players to compete and that's the greatest strength a player can have," said Moore. "Matt especially had a great tournament - making the finals and losing 7-6 in the third set to a top guy from Miami! The guy he beat in the semi's is a 12.6 UTR and a top player on a very good team. Matt beat two guys that were above 12 UTR this weekend and he's improve so much. His fitness and work ethic are as good as anyone in college."
Up next, the men will head to Tulsa, Oklahoma for the ITA All-American on Saturday.
A&M-Corpus Christi Tennis
- 14 NCAA Tournaments
- 30 SLC Championships
- 4 Top-40 National Rankings
- 3.0 GPA 37 Straight Semesters
- Islanders have received a No. 3 seed at the NCAA Tournament three times
- Women's tennis has cracked the ITA top-75 national rankings three times
- Men's tennis has cracked the ITA national rankings 10 consecutive years
- Ranked nationally in NCAA DI as high as No. 35 for the men and No. 60 for the women
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