Finishing Strong
The Women’s Tennis team regular season is officially over as of April 11, 2014. Our lady flames lead by seniors Annisha Domenech, Rebekah Jenkins, and Cameron Richard defeated the Richmond Spiders 6-1 on senior day, giving the flames a win in their sixth straight match.
“Our seniors inspired us. This is senior day and I think the emotion of all the girls wanting to play for them as well as our seniors wanting to play their best in their last home match really carried us to a high level of tennis,” said head coach Jeff Maren.
From the very beginning of the match the flames took control. They received their first point competing in doubles and winning two out of three matches against the spiders.
On court 2, Brittany Yang and Annisha Domenech defeated Richmond’s Brittany Boys and Katya Salas in a landslide score of 8-2. While on court 3 Cameron Richard and Valarie Thong won their ninth straight doubles match defeating Richmond’s Elizabeth Sims and Denny Lamachia with a similar score of 8-3.
Moving on to singles play, the flames got off to a little bit of a slow start. Senior Rebekah Jenkins who plays with great heart and emotion ran into some trouble and was defeated by Brittany Boys with a score of 6-2 and 6-1. This would tie the overall score of the match and leave it wide open for anyone to grasp.
Soon later though, Yang was the first flame to secure a win as she flew past her competition winning the first set 6-1 and then her second set 6-4. From then on the floodgates opened and Liberty would not be denied.
Yang states, “we wanted to be aggressive and fearless. Going into conference it is really important to believe in yourself. So I wanted to go out there and not hold anything back.”
Following Yang’s win, Mariely Hassey defeated Katya Salas in 2 sets, 6-4 and 6-0. Nicola Wellman was right behind her as she defeated Kelsey Williams 6-1 and 6-2.
Liberty currently held the lead 4-1 securing yet another win but the 2 matches left seemed to be quite a challenge for the athletes and very exciting for the fans.
On court 3 Maria Khval went against Emily Sims and was able to break Sims at crucial points in both sets to take the advantage and win the match. Right next to her on court 1 Belen Rivera went up against Anna Abadia Morales in a very tight match as well.
Rivera started the match down 4-5 but came back to beat Morales 7-5 in a tiebreaker. The next set still very much both back and fourth, Rivera was able to come out on top winning 6-3. This secured her 13th win of the season.
The Overall win was a great moral booster as this is the first time in 4 matches that the flames have beaten the Richmond spiders.
Coming up next week the flames travel to Boiling Springs, North Carolina for the first round of the Big South Tournament and look to continue to achieve their goals of becoming tournament champions and moving on to a regional.