PORTLAND, Ore. – The Linfield women's tennis team swept their way to its fourth straight win of the season Saturday, beating Lewis and Clark 9-0 in a non-conference match at the LC Tennis Dome.
The win improved the Wildcats to 5-2 on the year and 2-1 in Northwest Conference action.
Linfield's dominating performance doused water on a red-hot Lewis and Clark squad. Going into the match the Pioneers (6-3, 2-1) had been on an impressive win streak of their own of at 6 straight matches.
DOUBLES
Linfield's top two doubles pairings of the day got the Wildcats off on the right foot with both duos winning the top two flights 8-1, with
Tessa Kern and
Lexie Matsunaga winning the top flight over the Pioneers Rachael Rice and Kacie Lau while the No. 2 flight went to
Taryn Fujimori and
Maggie Fiocchi taking down Caren Uribe and Eadie Poulsen.
The 'Cats moved to a 3-0 lead when the third flight went to
Allena Wong and
Emma Tuttle over Lewis and Clark's Maca Vives and Arielle Bloom, 8-4
SINGLES
Although the Wildcats breezed through the top two doubles flights of the day, the top two singles flights proved to be more competitive to begin.
In the No. 1 flight Fujimori was barely edged out in the first set, losing 7-6 on a 10-6 tiebreaker. She immediately responded with a 6-1 win in game two before handily closing out the contest in the third 6-7, 6-1, 10-4 to beat Rice.
Matsunaga also dropped the opening set of flight No. 2 in a tiebreaker, 10-3, but also shined brightly in her response, winning set two 6-1 before closing out the win 6-1 against Uribe and assuring a win on the day for the Wildcats by improving their lead to 5-0.
After sitting through doubles play
Sarah Forester won the third singles flight of the day in early fashion when Vives retired in the second set with Forester ahead 7-5, 4-3 to increase Linfield's lead to 6-0.
In the No. 4 flight Wong cruised past Poulson to win 6-0, 6-0 while Fiocchi saw little resistance from Hayley Kreps to win the No. 5 flight 6-0, 6-1.
The Wildcats completed the 9-0 sweep of the match, their second 9-0 victory of the season, in a battle of true freshmen with Tuttle handling Lau 6-1, 6-3 in the No. 6 flight.
NEXT
The Wildcats are back in action tomorrow morning as they host Concordia-Texas (5-2) of the American Southwest Conference in McMinnville, with the match start time scheduled for 9:00. They'll then take two weeks off before resuming NWC play on April 2 at Willamette (0-2).
Â
