All eight members of the Illinois women’s tennis roster competed in a UTR College Circuit hosted at Atkins Tennis Center this weekend. The competition consisted of both singles and doubles tournaments with 35 total competitors in each. Illinois players won a combined 26 of the 34 matches they competed in, which culminated in winning both the singles draw and doubles draw. 

In the first round of the doubles tournament, three of the four Illinois duos had byes while senior Emily Casati and sophomore Kasia Treiber suffered a close loss to a duo from Illinois State.

The second round saw another close loss, as sophomore Kida Ferrari and freshman Violetta Martinez were defeated in a tiebreak game after evenly splitting 12 games against a duo from Iowa. 

In the semi-finals, junior Kate Duong and sophomore Megan Heuser were defeated by the same duo as Ferrari and Martinez, while seniors Ashley Yeah and Josie Frazier steamrolled through their opponents with a 6-0 victory en route to the finals.

In the finals, Yeah and Frazier got their revenge against the duo that had eliminated their teammates in the two previous rounds, as they fought out a hard-earned 7-5 victory to claim the doubles championship.

The singles tournament was complete domination for the Illini, who made up seven of the eight remaining competitors after two rounds.

As a result, the quarterfinals saw three Illinois versus Illinois matchups which resulted in Frazier, Ferrari and Duong beating out Heuser, Treiber and Martinez respectively. As the sole player not facing another teammate, Yeah managed to come back from losing her first set and move on to the semifinals.

From here, it was decided that the rest of the singles tournament did not need to be played due to all four semi-finalists being from Illinois. 

Illinois women’s tennis will be back in action this Friday at the Alabama invite in Tuscaloosa, Ala., looking to earn excellent results for the third weekend in a row.

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