MCMINNVILLE, ORE. – The Linfield women's tennis team opened Northwest Conference play Saturday with a win over Pacific, beating the Boxers 7-2.
The Wildcats improved to 4-2 overall, 2-0 at home and extended their win streak to three straight matches.
Although dropping the No. 1 flight in both singles and doubles, the depth for the Wildcats proved to be too much for Pacific as Linfield cruised to victory through the afternoon.
DOUBLES
Although Linfield's top doubles squad of senior
Tessa Kern and junior
Lexie Matsunaga lost 8-5 in the No. 1 flight of the day to Pacific's siter pairing of Cassidy and Sydnie Binder, the Wildcats saw strong performances in the two doubles contests that followed.
In the No. 2 flight seniors
Maggie Fiocchi and
Taryn Fujimori won 8-3 over Pacific's Valentina Casab-Klescova and Grace Truong. It was pure domination for Linfield in the No. 3 flight as junior
Allena Wong and freshman
Emma Tuttle downed the Boxers' Jessica Eligio and Gillian Mead, 8-0, to put Linfield in front 2-1 at the end of doubles action.
"We had a very strong show in doubles, and I'm really impressed with the new pair of Allena and Emma, who had a great match at No. 3 and showed a lot of growth in their doubles play," said head coach Ella Maliska-Riddle.
SINGLES
Singles play opened with a loss for Linfield as Fujimori fell to Cassidy Binder, 6-3, 6-1, in the No. 1 flight to even the score on the day at 2-2, but it was the final loss Linfield took for the rest of the match.
Matsunaga bounced back from her double's loss with a tough 7-5, 2-6, 10-7 victory over Sydnie Binder in the No. 2 flight, and while sophomore
Sarah Forester saw early resistance from Truong in the No. 3 flight, she owned the second set of the contest and ended up winning the flight 7-6, 5-0.
In the fourth singles matchup of the day Wong handled Casab-Klescova 6-4, 6-2 while Fiocchi cruised to a 6-0, 6-0 win over Eligio in the No. 5 flight.
Tuttle beat Mead 7-6, 5-1 to settle score for the match at 7-2 Linfield.
"Our girls really had to focus against a fired up pacific team and stay focused until the very end of their matches. I'm really proud of how they adapted to the new line up positions that I put them in today and how they rose to the challenge," said Maliska-Riddle. "Special shout out to Lexi for an amazing win at #2 singles against a very talented Sydnie Binder."
NEXT
The 'Cats will hit the road next weekend to play at Lewis and Clark (6-2, 2-0) on Saturday in Portland, with the match starting at 10:00. Linfield will then host a highly anticipated inter-conference match with Concordia Texas (5-1) on Sunday at 10:00.
Linfield will then take two weeks off from competition before traveling to Salem to play Willamette (0-2) on April 2.
Â
