Women's tennis falls to Vanderbilt and South Florida

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by Shay Gilmore

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The women's tennis team returned home after spring break with some disappointing losses to Vanderbilt University and the University of South Florida.

The Owls took on USF in Tampa after they finished their bout with Vanderbilt at the Jake Hess Tennis Stadium. The Commodores, coming off of big wins at the national indoors proved to be too much for the Rice women.

Vanderbilt is currently ranked 17th in the nation, but their wins of late may boost them to top-10 status.

Vanderbilt's number-one woman, Meredith Chiles, set the pace for the match-up against Rice as she swiftly thwarted Rice's number one, junior Paula Myslivecek, in straight sets.

"The Vanderbilt girls are really strong," sophomore Jane Trinh said. "The match was a good learning experience for us."

Head Coach Paul Blankenship agreed. "I was really impressed with the Vanderbilt girls," he said.

"But I was just as impressed with the effort our girls gave. We might not have been quite as sharp as we had been in the past because of the midterm crunch, but all of the effort was there. I'm proud of the job we did."

The only bright spot for the Owls in the Vanderbilt match was the singles win of junior Jessica Gagnon. Vanderbilt's number-two woman, Cassie Creighton, had earlier boasted a national singles ranking of 71.

This didn't bother Gagnon as she matched Creighton point for point and pulled out a three-set victory.

"This was an outstanding win for Jessica," Blankenship said. "Jessica really came through, and we are all quite proud of her performance."

The Vanderbilt women took two of three doubles matches. The Rice team of sophomore Erin Talton and freshman Jennifer Velasco won their doubles match by default. Vanderbilt left Jake Hess with a 7-2 win.

On March 5, the Owls traveled to Tampa, Fla., where they battled the University of South Florida. This was a tough loss for the Owls as they came out on the wrong end of a very close match-up.

Myslivecek got the team off to a great start with her straight set win over USF's Shelley Sewell. However, this win was followed by a series of flip-flop win-losses for the Owls.

Gagnon capitulated to Alicia Kersten 6-7, 1-6 just as Velasco was finishing off her opponent, Lisa Woodbridge, in straight-set style.

Similarly, as senior Olga Limon was busy battling to a triumphant third set, Vessie Ivanova was yielding to her opponent in the third set of her singles match.

With the match score tied at four-all, it all came down to the number-one doubles match, which pitted Ivanova and Limon against Sewell and Danielle Hose.

After losing the first set 1-6, Ivanova and Limon battled back to win the second set 6-4. However, their momentum was stopped by the USF team as Sewell and Hose took the third set 6-3.

"This was a very hard match for us," Blankenship said. "It reminds me of the Texas A&M University match in which we were also tied and ended up pulling through in the clutch. We just came out on the wrong end this time."

The Rice women left yesterday for El Paso where they will participate in the Paso Spring Shootout.

Competiton will be from University of Texas at El Paso, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and New Mexico State University.

Southwest Conference play will begin on March 23 when the Baylor Bears visit Jake Hess Stadium.

Future home matches include Southern Methodist University and Nicholls State University.

This item appeared in the Sports section of the March 15, 1996 issue.

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