Illinois women’s tennis spent last weekend in North Carolina, taking on UNC Charlotte for the first time in program history, following that with a matchup against No. 15 Duke.
Against Charlotte, Illinois kicked off the weekend with doubles. The team’s No. 2 pairing of senior Kate Duong and fifth-year Josie Frazier ran through their opponents, not dropping a game in their win. However, Charlotte outmatched Illinois at the No.1 and No. 3 positions, securing the doubles point.
In singles, however, the show belonged to Illinois. Frazier, sophomore McKenna Schaefbauer and sophomore Violeta Martinez all won their matches in straight sets. To clinch the victory against Charlotte, junior Megan Heuser claimed a hard-fought three-set win against Lucia Quiterio, the No. 98 player in the ITA rankings. Heuser started the match by losing the first set 3-6, but bounced back to decisively win both the second and third sets 6-2.
“It’s never over till the last point is played, and I was just keeping that mindset going into the second set,” Heuser said. “We got up to 2-2 in the second, early. I got an early break 3-2, and I was able to kind of break the momentum at that 3-2 point and take away that set. And then going into the third set, you’re looking up at the scoreboard, and my match was super important in dictating our win for our team, so I really had to lock in and focus, and I had to play my best tennis.”
The next day, the team took on Duke. Unlike their previous matchup, the Illini claimed the doubles point, winning two out of the three matches, with the lone loss again coming at No.1 doubles. At No. 2 doubles, Duong and Frazier were down 4-5 but battled through the next three games to secure the match 7-5.
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“Even though we were down 5-4, Kate, my partner, was serving, and we had won all of her service games,” Frazier said. “So we felt confident about that with her serving and me at the net being able to attack. We saved two match points. After that, I think we had all the momentum and confidence, and that kind of led us to continue to win the next few games.”
Ultimately though, singles proved to be the Illini’s weak point against the Blue Devils. Duke claimed victories at No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 and No. 5 singles, with Illinois’ lone victory coming through a straight sets win by junior Kida Ferrari at No. 6 singles. Martinez’s match went unfinished at the No. 4 spot.
Despite the loss, head coach Evan Clark did not seem worried and is looking forward to the Illini taking on more highly ranked teams this weekend.
“I think we competed really well, we fought really well in both matches,” Clark said. “The margins are really thin against a good team like that (Duke). We have two really tough matches now. We play Cal first. I think they’re ranked 19 right now maybe, but they probably should be higher. And then in the next round, we play either Oklahoma or UCF, and they’re both top 25, so really tough weekend — and hopefully we can steal one or two of those.”
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