MCMINNVILLE, Ore. – On the day honoring seniorsÂ
Tessa Kern and
Maggie Fiocchi, the Linfield women's tennis team clinched the 16
th Northwest Conference regular season championship in program history on Saturday, the second under head coach
Ella Riddle Maliska, beating the Puget Sound Loggers 8-1 to end the regular season on an 11-match winning streak.
It is the fifth consecutive conference championship for the Wildcats. They are amidst the second-longest run of consecutive conference championships in program history (Linfield won seven in a row from 2002-2009), and this season marks just the fourth time in NWC women's tennis history that a program has claimed at least five straight first-place finishes.
Linfield ends the regular season with an overall record of 12-2 and a perfect 8-0 mark against NWC opponents while going 6-0 at home. The Wildcats have now won 44 straight matches in NWC play going back to March 4, 2017.
The Loggers ended the season with a 4-6 record, 2-4 in conference play, to finish seventh in the conference standings.
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DOUBLES
Although Linfield took all three double contests, it was not without significant competition in the No.'s 1 and 3 flights.
In the No. 1 flight Linfield's Kern and
Lexie Matsunaga initially went down 2-1 to Puget Sound's top pairing of Andie Machida and Paige Shinall, but eventually battled back to win 8-5. It was the fifth straight win as a duo for Kern and Matsunaga, improving their record this season to 8-2 and 5-1 against conference opponents.
A win in the No. 2 doubles flight proved to be a much easier task for the Wildcats, as Fiocchi and
Taryn Fujimori cruised to an 8-0 win over Laura Schneidman and Rachel Heinke. Fujimori has now won the last 11 doubles flights she has played in, the longest streak for any Wildcat this year.
The win stretched Fiocchi and Fujimori's win streak as a team to eight, and improved their record on the year to 9-2, the best doubles record for any Linfield duo this season. They have gone a perfect 6-0 in conference matches.
Allena Wong and
Emma Tuttle improved their doubles record to 7-3 with their sixth straight win, knocking off Marissa Perez and Hyla Chatham 8-5 in the No. 3 flight, setting the score at 3-0, Linfield at the end of doubles play.
Tuttle and Wong have also been unbeaten as a duo in conference play, putting together a 6-0 record this season.
The Wildcats finish the regular season with an impressive 33-8 mark in doubles flights this year, highlighted by an astonishing 25-2 record in conference matches.
SINGLES
Singles play would be where the Loggers got their lone point of the day, but Linfield would take most of the challenge in stride to win the match convincingly.
The No. 1 flight saw Fujimori fall to a conference opponent as Linfield's top singles player for just the second time all season, losing a hard-fought contest to Machida in a third-set tiebreaker, 4-6, 7-5, 6-10 to get Puget Sound on the board with the match score at Wildcats 3, Loggers 1.
The loss snapped a seven-match singles win streak for Fujimori.
The task would prove easier for Linfield through the rest of singles play, beginning with Forester, playing in the No. 2 flight for just the second time in her career, winning 6-3, 6-2 over Shinall.
Forester improved to 10-2 in singles this season, with a 7-1 mark in conference.
The No. 3 flight started a run of one-sided play in the match with Wong controlling the action end-to-end with a 6-0, 6-0 win over Zoe Love to clinch the match for Linfield with the score at 5-1. It was Wong's eighth straight win in singles play.
Fiocchi followed Wong with a shutout of her own against Schneidman, 6-0, 6-0, in the No. 4 flight. It was Fiocchi's 11
th win in singles play against two losses, while going a team-best 9-0 against NWC rivals.
The No. 5 flight saw early competition through the first few games before Tuttle pulled away in the first set and never looked back to beat Perez 6-2, 6-0. Tuttle improved to 9-0 in singles in her impressive freshman season.
The match was capped off by
Alexis Garner handling Chatham well in the first set, before facing resistance in the second. But Garner eventually claimed the win 6-1, 6-4, to set the final score at 8-1, Puget Sound.
Garner ends the regular season also going unbeaten through her freshman year, accumulating a 4-0 record.
The Wildcats were nearly just as dominant through singles play all season as they were in doubles, going 62-21 in singles flights all year. They won over 90 percent of singles flights against NWC opponents with a 49-5 record in conference play.
NEXT
With the claim to the conference championship Linfield has earned the right to host the NWC Tournament in McMinnville, hosting for the fourth time in program history. The tournament will take place next weekend on Saturday, April 23 and Sunday, April 24.
The three other teams in the tournament will be the Whitman Blues (13-5, 7-1), the Whitworth Pirates (8-7, 6-2) and the George Fox Bruins (12-7, 5-3).
The semifinals on Saturday feature Linfield versus George Fox while Whitman plays Whitworth in dual match competition. The championship match on Sunday will determine the NWC's automatic representative to the NCAA Regionals on May 12.
