On a windy Sunday morning, Texas Women’s Tennis once again took to the court and once again walked away victorious. Overcoming their opponent Kansas State 4-0, the Longhorns completed their eighth sweep of the season.
Kansas State came into today’s contest as the evident underdog. The Wildcats are 1-7 in conference play and find themselves on a seven-game losing streak. With their loss today, Kansas State remains winless on the road.
After earning the match’s doubles point, the Longhorns ventured into their six singles matches. Victories came on courts one, two and four for seniors Malaika Rapolu, Taisiya Pachkaleva and graduate student Tanya Sasnouskaya. Sasnouskaya had the quickest match of the day, finishing first after defeating sophomore opponent Vanesa Suarez. This was Sasnouskaya’s second consecutive match on court one and is currently the No. 32 rated player in the nation.
No. 23 Rapolu, who currently has the second-highest singles ranking on the team, defeated her opponent in two sets. Rapolu currently holds an individual record of 30–3 on the season and has been one of the Longhorn’s most reliable performers on the court.
A highlight of the day’s match came on court four when Pachkaleva defeated her opponent, freshman Maralgoo Chogsomjav, in two sets. In her first set Pachkaleva started down 4-1 and was forced to rally from behind. After fighting her way back to tie the set 5-5, the Moscow native won, defeating her opponent 7-5.
“Before the match me and (my) coach spoke about a strategy for the match (and) the most important thing was to keep the aggression going,” said Pachkaleva. “In those sets, it didn’t go well in the beginning, but as I was playing more it was getting better and better.”
The second set seemed a repetition of the first. Going down 4-2, Pachkaleva once again had to rally towards victory. Despite the advantage, Chogsomjav could not fend off Pachkaleva’s building momentum. The senior Longhorn went on to win the set 6-4 and secure the day’s victory for the rest of her team.
Texas continues its winning campaign over Big 12 opponents over the last couple of weeks. Currently, the team stands at 6-1 in conference with their only loss coming against No. 1 Oklahoma State. Their narrow loss to the Cowboys was the end of a five-game win streak, all of which came against Big 12 opponents.
Despite today’s success, head coach Howard Joffe felt there was still room for improvement.
“Frankly, today I felt like it wasn’t our best performance, obviously the matches were in our favor … (but it) wasn’t necessarily our best tennis,” said Joffe. “We obviously just came off of playing the number one team in the country … and I wonder if (today) there wasn’t a little letdown.”
Texas has a short week ahead of them when they face Kansas this Thursday on the road. The Longhorns are 2-2 on the road and Kansas currently ranks No. 50 in ITA standings. Texas will not play at home again until April 4th against Texas Tech.
