After an overwhelmingly successful return to Atkins, the Illinois women’s tennis team will head to Tallahassee to compete at the ITA Kickoff Weekend hosted by Florida State.

The Illini are currently on a hot streak, having handily won their last four matches. This weekend will provide some challenging opponents for the team, as Illinois (4-1) will come up against No. 18 Florida State (2-0) on Saturday and either No. 19 Florida (2-0) or Florida International (0-0) on Sunday. 

The Illini enjoyed an extremely fruitful home return, going 3-0 and not dropping a single point over the course of last week. Illinois swept Harvard, 7-0, Eastern Illinois, 7-0 and Chicago State, 4-0. It’s also important to note the matches against EIU and Chicago State were both played on the same day.

The Illini showed great endurance and resilience last Sunday to not only win both matches but go a perfect combined 11-0 against them as well.

Sunday will see Illinois play either No. 19 Florida or Florida International. This will depend on the winners and losers coming out of the previous day’s matches. Against Florida, Illinois is 0-2 in program history. One of these losses was a 7-0 defeat back in 2001.

This season, Florida is 2-0. On the other hand, Illinois has only played Florida International once in program history, falling 6-3 on that occasion. Florida International has yet to play a match this season. This weekend will give the Illini the chance to get first ever wins against one of these two schools.

The guaranteed opponent, however, is Saturday’s No. 18 Florida State, which currently holds a 2-0 record this season. Historically, the Illini are 3-6 against the Seminoles but are on a two-game winning streak against them.

Still, this will be the second time this season that the Illini will come up against a ranked opponent. The first time was the season opener against No. 11 Baylor, which defeated Illinois, 6-1. FSU will provide another difficult test for the team.

“They’ll be tough,” said head coach Evan Clark. “They’re hosting at their site, so it’ll be a really really tough match, but I think our team’s ready for it. We’re five matches in, and we’re in a great position. We have a lot of momentum going into Florida State.”

A trip to the ITA Division I National Team Indoor Championships in Madison, Wisconsin, is on the line this weekend. The winners of each regional site at this ITA Kickoff Weekend will advance to the championships in February. For the time being, though, it is the ranked Seminoles standing in the Illini’s way.

“I think we can play with anyone in the country,” Clark said. “Florida State’s a really good team, so we’re gonna need our best stuff to beat them.”

@james_kim15

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