Catamount Tennis drops a trio of SoCon matches

For the 4th straight spring season, the Lady Catamount tennis team goes winless in the Southern Conference. Losing three conference matches to Appalachian State, Furman and Chattanooga dropped the Lady Catamounts to 5-and-13 on the season and 0-and-9 in the Conference. On April 2, the Lady Catamounts showed promise with #1-seed Freshman Tessie Salame defeating Anja Gugger of Appalachian State in straight sets 6-2, 7-5. She later teamed with Trish Hanson in doubles to defeat Gugger and Amanda Cash, 8-6. Aside from Salame winning her match, no other Western player won her singles’ match. Mariona Trilla Jane was the only Lady Catamount to win a set, 7-5 in between a 6-1 and 6-3 defeat to Caroline Mauch. Jane would later team up with Amanda Massey in doubles to defeat Monica Tomas and Caroline Mauch, 8-4. In the end, the Lady Mountaineers were just too much for Western to handle and they fell 5-2. The very next day, the Lady Catamount Tennis team traveled down to the Palmetto state but would fall to Furman University, 7-0, at the Mickel Tennis Center in Greenville, South Carolina. Number 1 singles’ player, Tessie Salame, fell to Laura Gioia, 6-0 and 6-3 while #2 Trish Hanson did not fare too much better against Lauren Osborne, 6-2, 6-2. Doubles did not fare much better, as they lost all three of those matches. Western closed out the Southern Conference regular season with a 5-2 loss to the Lady Mocs of UT-Chattanooga at the UTC Tennis Complex in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It took #2 singles’ player Trish Hanson three sets to win her match, but she was able to defeat Lindsey Ballard of UTC, 6-7, 6-1, before taking the tiebreaker. Amanda Massey, the #4 singles’ player also took her opponent to a tiebreaker, but was unable to come away with the match, winning the 1st set, 6-3, losing the 2nd set 7-5, before losing the tiebreaker to Bonnie Adams of Chattanooga. Mariona Trilla Jane, the #5 singles’ player won her match in straight sets, 6-4 and 6-3. Despite dropping the 1st two doubles’ sets, Susanna Sjokvist and her doubles partner, Emily Turke, salvaged a doubles’ match by defeating Kate Ksiezopolski and Celeste Nicholson, 8-5. The Lady Catamounts will go into the Southern Conference Tournament as the #10 seed and face #8 Wofford in the 1st round. Best of luck to the Lady Catamount Tennis team.