Drake women’s tennis team opens conference play with excellence
Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The Drake women’s tennis team continued their conference play success against the Bradley University Braves on March 26. The day before, on March 25, the team had fallen to the Illinois State University Redbirds, pushing their conference record to 1-1.
In that Illinois State matchup, the Bulldogs fell 2-5, but picked up a few wins along the way. At doubles one, Darinka Stepan and Mille Haagensen got a 6-3 win over Tijana Zlatanovic and Tara Damnjanovic. At singles one, Ines Stephani secured a 6-3, 7-5 win alongside a 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 win by Oriana Parkins-Godwin at singles five.
“Throughout the match I tried to stick with my game plan of being aggressive with my serve and setting up the points well enough to come forward and finish off the points,” Parkins-Godwin said, after her singles five win.
The team took on Bradley the following day. They got off to a quick start during the doubles matchups.
First-year Elizabete Klavinska and senior Rebecca Ehn secured a 6-3 doubles win over Bradley to open things up. Stephani and Parkins-Godwin clinched the doubles point with a 6-4 win at doubles two despite opening the set with a 1-4 deficit.
Haagensen secured Drake’s first singles point with a 6-3, 6-3 win at singles two. Stephani brought in the next singles point after battling through a three set match, winning by a line of 6-1, 4-6, 6-1. After this match, Drake sat with a score of 3-1 overall against the Braves.
Parkins-Godwin secured a 6-3, 6-3 win at singles five, and sophomore Jyun-Yi Lee won her matchup 6-1, 6-4 to solidify a 5-2 Drake win over Bradley.
“I’m proud of how the team competed today; the circumstances that we played under were different, not being able to play all of the singles matches at once,” senior Kendall Hunt said shortly following the win. “But we still went out and competed hard for every point and got another conference win.”
Following a dominating 7-0 win over Missouri State University on February 1 and a similarly dominating 7-0 win over Valparaiso on Feb. 2, the Drake women’s tennis team currently sits with a 4-1 conference record and an 11-7 record overall.
