No. 7 Texas A&M women’s tennis concluded its non-conference schedule with a victory against Rice on Sunday, Feb. 27, improving to 14-1 entering conference play.
A&M got off to a rough start losing two of the three doubles matches to give Rice an early 1-0 lead. The lone bright spot was a 6-1 victory from freshman Mary Stoiana and junior Carson Branstine. However, this would only be a minor hiccup for A&M in the match.
In singles play, the Aggies took back the lead behind straight set victories from freshman Gianna Pielet and senior Jayci Goldsmith.
A ninth straight singles victory from senior Tatiana Makarova increased A&M’s lead to 3-1, and placed the team on the brink of its fifth straight victory.
The Aggies clinched the win over the Owls with a decisive straight set victory from Stoiana. This marked Stoiana’s fifth time clinching a victory for the maroon and white this season.
Stoiana said A&M is ready to continue strong play heading into its SEC schedule.
“It feels great to clinch matches for our team,” Stoiana said. “It shows that I’m playing with a decent level of consistency and that my training is really paying off in ways that can help our team have success. Going into the SEC season is really exciting because the team has come together and has been preparing for this moment all year. We won today and a lot of our players got some great matches in, so I feel like we are ready [for] conference next week.”
Coach Mark Weaver said he was pleased with the way A&M responded from losing the doubles point to Rice.
“We definitely weren’t as sharp as we needed to be in the doubles,” Weaver said. “It felt like every big point went Rice’s way in the doubles competition today. On the optimistic side, those were our first doubles losses of the year. We were 28-0 heading into today, and sometimes that sort of thing gets in your head. I’m pleased that we had to face some adversity today. We have four players out there who never knew what it felt like to lose a doubles point until today, and that is something we cannot recreate in practice. So, I’m very pleased with the way our team responded following that.”
Despite playing well at the moment, Weaver said A&M still has a lot of work to do in preparation for the start of conference play next week.
“It definitely feels like one of our strongest starts in quite a while,” Weaver said. “I’m very pleased with the way this team has come together and how they have consistently found ways to have success. We have a lot of great weather ahead of us, thankfully, so I’m looking forward to getting some good practices in this week. It is a big change temperamentally going from non-conference play to SEC matches, so our preparation this week is going to be very important.”
Next up for the Aggies is their inaugural SEC match at home against South Carolina on Friday, March 4. First serve at the Mitchell Tennis Center is set for 3 p.m.
