By Branson Hardcastle | Broadcast Reporter
The 16th ranked women’s tennis team had a rough weekend dropping two matches at home against Tulsa and University of Central Florida.
The Lady Bears hosted Tulsa on Saturday at the Hawkins Indoor Arena falling to the Golden Hurricane 4-2.
Tulsa started the match hot, winning the doubles point with a pair of 6-3 victories and winning the No. 1 singles match. The Golden Hurricane used those victories to go up 2-0 on Baylor and never looked back.
The Lady Bears tried to make a comeback with freshman Livia Kraus defeating Alexandrina Chinkova 6-2 and 6-0. This was Kraus’ third dual match win of the season as she played on the No. 6 singles court. This cut the deficit in half with Baylor trialing 2-1.
Baylor sophomore Angelina Shakhraichuk played the No. 3 singles, winning the first set 6-1. Shakhraichuk lost all of her momentum after that as she dropped the next two sets 6-2, 6-2.
With the Lady Bears down 3-1, sophomore Jessica Hinojosa stepped up and delivered a big win over Vera Ploner 4-6, 7-5, 7-5. This win cut the Golden Hurricane’s lead down to 3-2, but Tulsa’s Martha Matoula defeated Baylor sophomore Camilla Abbate to give the them the 4-2 win.
The Lady Bears hoped to bounce back from that loss Sunday when they faced UCF at Hawkins Indoor Arena.
Baylor started off slow again as it lost the doubles point 6-2 and 6-0.
UCF continued to pour it on the Lady Bears after the doubles taking the first two singles matches 6-4.6-2 and 6-2,6-4. These wins put the Knights up 3-0 early in the match.
After going down 3-0, the Lady Bears began to fight back with 101st ranked Kraus defeating Monica Matias in the first set 6-2. In the second set, Kraus was challenged more by Matias as the set went to a tiebreak with Kraus coming out on top 7-6 (7-0) to give Baylor its first point of the day.
Abbate played at No. 2 singles against UCF’s Maria Martinez. This was a hard-fought match on both sides as the players were locked in an intense battle. Martinez took the first set besting Abbate 6-4. Abbate came out strong in the second set taking a commanding 3-0 lead, but Martinez fought her way back to force a tiebreak at 6-6.
The tiebreak was a back and forth affair as neither side would allow the other to go up two until Abbate’s return went wide and landed out giving Martinez the 9-7 win and UCF the 4-1 lead.
Baylor senior Theresa Van Zyl won the last of Baylor’s points at No. 1 singles battling back to defeat Ksenia Kuznetsova in three sets 4-6, 6-2 and 6-1.
Baylor head coach Joey Scrivano believes the team will use this experience to grow and improve.
“I’m really proud of the way our team competed. Obviously, the result isn’t where we want it to be, but the effort is there. We’ll keep getting better as the season progresses,” Scrivano said.
With these losses, Baylor drops to 2-4 on the season. These two losses also snap Baylor’s 21 match home win streak. The Lady Bears look get back on track next weekend when they welcome Ole Miss and Miami to Waco.
