Continuing to have trouble, the Lady Lion tennis team fell yesterday to the Minnesota Lady Gophers 7-2 at the Penn State Tennis Club, completing a Big Ten makeup weekend with a pair of losses.
"Really, we just didn't play well these past two matches," Coach Sue Whiteside said of the Iowa and Minnesota contests. "Not that I'm not real happy with the players, a couple of them were just flat the whole weekend. It makes the difference."
In singles play, Minnesota swept all six seeds. Only Penn State's top two players held on to push their matches to three sets. Olga Novikova lost to Tiffany Gates 6-2, 2-6, 6-2 and Minnesota native Tammy Okins-Nguyen fell to Shanna Johnson 4-6, 6-3, 6-3. Tricia Lehman, Robyn Reagan, Andi Chiumento and Kim Nelson all lost in straight sets to the talented Minnesota team.
However, the really exciting play occurred when the singles matches were over and the doubles teams took the courts. The No. 1 doubles team of Okins-Nguyen/Novokova defeated Gates/Dana Peterson 6-2, 7-5.
In No. 2 doubles, the skill and endurance of Kristin Kovalik/Chiumento worked to their advantage in the second set against Jenny Marques/Kathy Wayne. Down by one game at 6-5 in the second set and plagued with an opponent who had trouble keeping score, Kovalik/Chiumento came back to win the next two games including the tie breaker for a well deserved 6-4, 7-6 win.
"We try to use (tension) to our advantage," Chiumento said of her opponent's heated tirade over a score in the first set. "We knew we were going to win. We had to come back but we knew we were a better team than them. We just needed to put it together. We got a little excited and tried to close it out a little too fast."
After this weekend's disappointing losses, the Lady Lions will use this week to prepare for two more Big Ten schools -- Michigan and Michigan State next weekend.
"We had a good week of practice last week," Whiteside said. "We had good drills, we just need to implement it. So, we're going to play a few more matches in practice and kind of get back on track."
