The Wyoming Cowgirl tennis team split a pair of Mountain West Conference matches last weekend in San Diego, Calif., as they edged host and No. 75-ranked San Diego State, 4-3, and fell 6-1 to the No. 36-ranked UNLV Rebels.
Wyoming (12-7, 3-3 MWC) came from behind to win a pivotal doubles point against San Diego State, which proved to be the deciding factor in the tough road match.
“We fought very hard today,” UW coach Kati Gyulai said. “We were down in doubles 6-3 and hung in there to come back and win it in a tie-breaker, which put us up 1-0. At that point, we truly believed that we could win and we played like it. We are extremely happy about this victory.”
Kim van Ginkel and Simona Synkova of UW fell behind 6-3 to sisters Roxanne Ellison and Sierra Ellison in the No. 1 spot, but battled back to win, 9-8 (1). Cowgirls Alexandra Kovacs and Rebecca Berger won easily over Julia Trunk and Julia Wais at the No. 2 position, 8-2, while Paloma Navarro and Sarah Summerfield fell 8-2 to Alicia Aguilar and Olivia Colman of SDSU, 8-2.
Synkova, van Ginkel and Berger won their singles matches, and Summerfield, Kovacs and Sasa Nemcova lost.
The following morning, the Cowgirls were overwhelmed by a strong UNLV team, who clinched second place in the MWC behind champion Utah. The Rebels swept the doubles matches and stormed through the singles events until Nemcova got UW on the board with a three-set win over Rumyana Terzieva, 6-3, 5-7, 1-0 (10-6), in the final match of the day.
Wyoming will conclude its regular season this week with Front Range trips to rivals Colorado State and Air Force. The Cowgirls will be in Fort Collins to face the Rams at 1 p.m. on Friday and then head to Colorado Springs and play the Falcons at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
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