Women's tennis digs out victory

This is beginning to get ugly. Two weeks ago, against some good competition, the Michigan women's tennis team lost the doubles point in both of its Big Ten matches. The Wolverines could muster only one victory in six doubles matches. Two of their losses were close 9-7 defeats.

This trend was supposed to end on Saturday when the Wolverines took on lowly Penn State in State College.

The Wolverines felt déjà vu all over again, however, and lost the doubles point for the third time in a row.

EMILY NATHAN/Daily Much like their male counterparts, the Michigan women's tennis team is trying to avoid a repeating trend - in their case losing the doubles point.

The Wolverines (7-2 Big Ten, 9-9 overall) again had to play catch-up, which they did successfully, reeling off four straight singles wins en route to a 4-3 victory in the match.

Their doubles play has been frustrating, though. Michigan dropped another 9-7 doubles match against Penn State (0-7, 2-12), and it wound up costing the doubles point.

Michigan's No. 3 doubles team of Tumeka Harris and Erryn Weggenman picked up the lone doubles victory for the Wolverines.

"We keep getting off to a slow start in doubles," Weggenman said. "I think it's just a matter of getting a few points here and there that we're not getting."

"It's definitely us," teammate Danielle Lund echoed. "We're beating ourselves."

After falling behind 1-0 after the doubles matches, the Wolverines took each of the lower four singles flights in straight sets.

Harris earned her 14th victory of the season at No. 3 singles, and is now one victory short of her career high.

Senior captain Sora Moon, who moved up from the No. 5 to the No. 4 slot to replace the injured Weggenman, won her fourth-straight Big Ten singles match.

Jen Boylan, who moved up from No. 6 singles to No. 5, also hammered out a two-set win, as did freshman Allison Sinclair, filling in at the No. 6 slot.

With the match clinched for the Wolverines at 4-1, Brooke Hart and Lund each went to three sets at No. 1 and No. 2 singles, respectively.

But both Hart and Lund dropped the third sets of their matches.

This brought the final tally to 4-3 in favor of the Wolverines, making the match appear much closer than it actually was.

"The score is a bit misleading," Michigan coach Bitsy Ritt said. "They won matches they had an opportunity to win. Luckily we were able to come back and win in singles."

While the doubles play has been less than spectacular as of late, Michigan has played strong in singles, as demonstrated by their domination of the Nittany Lions in the four lower flights.

04-20-98