Tech Tennis competed in Florida last week
HOUGHTON, Mich. – The Michigan Tech men's and women's tennis teams went on their annual spring break last week. The Huskies competed against five different opponents on the trip.
The men's team earned a 4-3 victory over NCAA Division I St. Bonaventure on February 27. Tech took the doubles point with a 7-6 win by Leon Sell and Jack Lin and a 6-1 victory by Nikolai Prosjanykov and Vitor Jordao. In singles, Vitor Jordao won in the No. 1 position while Eli Pinnoo and Ian Pinnoo won in the fifth and sixth spots.
The Huskies took the doubles point against Embry Riddle to open the trip on February 26 with Jack Lin and Leon Sell and Eli Pinnoo and Landon Coates earning wins.
On the women's side, Chiara Heinz swept her opponent 6-0, 6-0 in No. 6 singles on February 27 at Lynn. She also won her singles match 3-6, 7-6, 1-0 in the trip finale on March 1 against Charleston at No. 4 singles.
Emily Cojocura won her No. 2 singles match 6-3, 7-6 at Florida Southern on February 29. Chiara Heinz and Caoimhe McDonnell were victorious in No. 3 doubles that day also.
Notes from head coach Kristin D'Agostini-Yep:
Spring break is a week where we try to play outdoor matches against other Division II teams that are outside of our region. With our spring break being earlier than normal this year, we ended up with a schedule of matches against mostly schools from the Sunshine State Conference, which historically has been an incredibly tough conference.
The Embry-Riddle men are ranked 16th nationally as of February 28th. They brought the heat right off the bat taking the doubles point, but the first match coming from indoors to outdoors is always a challenge and we struggled to make the transition in singles. Embry-Riddle women are ranked 25th nationally. Our women are definitely stronger players indoors, and really struggled this day to transition outdoors.
Lynn men are ranked 18th nationally as of February 28th. We played clinch-clinch for this match. The doubles matches were neck and neck right up until the end. All singles matches were also close and I think those that did not finish would have ended up very close as well. The men's team ended up on a high note later in the evening though with a last-minute double header match against St. Bonaventure. The nail-biter started off with us winning the doubles point by taking No. 1 and No. 3 doubles and ended with Vitor clinching the win 4-3 in a three-set match. Lynn women are ranked 7th nationally and ranked as high as 3 this season so far. This may be one of the toughest teams we play this season and are solid from top to bottom, but Chiara Heinz took care of business at No. 6 singles by winning 6-0, 6-0.
For the Florida Southern match, we played clinch-clinch on just the men's side as they have separate coaches for each program and wanted to do something different. This is a strong team even though they're not ranked in the top 25. On the women's side, we've been struggling with some health issues and had two girls out of the line-up. Emily Cojocaru really shined this day with a solid match at No. 2 singles.
Charleston (WV) men surprised us to be stronger than expected and it being our 5th match of the week, our team was starting to tire from the tough week of matches. Charleston (WV) women are ranked 18th nationally and we have just started to get into the momentum of playing outdoors. There were a few solid singles matches in there, but none tighter than the last match with Chiara Heinz winning at No. 4 singles in a third-set match tiebreak.
Overall, it was a great experience for our teams to compete against that kind of strength of schedule.
Upcoming Schedule
The Huskies continue their play on the road at Maryville on Friday and Missouri-St. Louis on Saturday.