Notre Dame travels to National Indoors Indoors
By STEVE KEPPEL
Sports Writer
This weekend the 11th-ranked Notre Dame women's tennis team heads to Wisconsin for the National Team Indoor Championship from Feb. 15-18. The Irish face some of the top ranked teams in the country in the 16-team field.
After a successful weekend last week the Irish will be seeded in the 5-8 bracket and will take on No. 40 Oklahoma State in the first round.
"Our goal is to make it past the second round," said junior Becky Varnum. "We've never done that in the past."
Last weekend the Irish won three dual matches in three days — beating No. 61 Virginia Tech, No. 8 Wake Forest, and No. 28 North Carolina.
The highlight of the week was on Saturday, as the Irish blanked the Deamon Deacons of Wake Forest 5-0. The Irish handed the Deacons their first loss of the year.
Senior All-American Michelle Dasso leads the Irish. Dasso is two singles wins away from becoming the winningest singles player in Notre Dame history.
She comes into the tournament with a record of 121-31 — one victory behind the record set by Kelly Zalinsky last year.
Dasso also needs just six combined doubles and singles wins to pass Zalinsky's record of 213 total wins.
The No 2-ranked Dasso has been rolling along this season with a 5-0 record in singles and is a major part of the team's success in dual play.
"She [Dasso] is a huge asset to the team, she really gets us going," said doubles partner Varnum, "I don't think we would be the same without her."
Also playing well lately is senior Kimberly Guy, who has moved up to the No. 5 singles spot and has a 9-0 dual match record so far this spring.
Guy started the spring by winning the second flight singles at the adidas Invitational in January. Since then she has gone undefeated in singles play.
If the Irish get past the first round they will face the winner of the match between No. 2-ranked Georgia and host Wisconsin on Friday. This will mark the eighth consecutive appearance for the Irish at the National Indoors.
Notre Dame is 9-12 in the tournament and has beaten highly ranked teams Stanford, Florida and Vanderbilt.
All Sports Stories for Friday, February 16, 2001
