Belles make clean sweep of opponents
By KATIE MCVOY
Assistant Sports Editor
The Saint Mary's tennis team made a clean sweep this weekend, defeating Alma College and Tri-State College Saturday 9 -0.
Saint Mary's faced Alma at the Notre Dame tennis facility, forced to play inside due to inclement weather. Because Alma was a conference match and had given Saint Mary's a challenge last year, Coach Dee Stevenson began his regular lineup.
"We were expecting them to be a challenge," Knish said. "They were a conference team and they had given us trouble last year."
The match got off to an exciting start with the first doubles match. The top doubles team, composed of Knish and Katie Vales, took the first set of the game 6-0 with very little resistance from their Alma opponents. However, the second set was a different story.
"We were very confident coming in and we took the first match easily," Knish said. "The second set we were a little too confident and we kind of let up and made a lot of unforced errors."
Luckily the Belles held on to some of their game and won the second set 7-6 in a tiebreaker, winning the match.
Vales also had an exciting singles match, having to go all three sets before claiming the victory. Coming from behind with a 0-1 margin, Vales won the second two sets to earn the `W'.
The rest of the morning's matches were uneventful. Trisha Jones, Natalie Cook, Knish, Becky Kremer, and Lindsay Mollan recorded wins in singles. The doubles teams of Cook and Kremer, and Victoria Cox and Elisa Ryan also scored points for the Belles.
The second game of the day proved to be very exciting. Surrounded by families and fans, the Belles faced off against Tri-State.
Stevenson took the opportunity to start a different line-up.
Marta Dziekan and Angie Sander went to three sets in their singles matches. Both came up with victories.
Sander, who played No. 3 singles, went immediately from her intense singles match to another intense doubles match. Teamed up with Dziekan, Sander faced another tough match, winning the match 8-6.
"It was really great competition," Dziekan said. "We played hard for about four hours straight."
The Belles went undefeated again, taking the match 9-0. Jones, Mollan, Elisabeth Spieth, and Cox won the four other singles matches, and the doubles teams of Jones and Mollan and Sarah Brahler and Leslie Ortiz finished the 9-0 victory.
The team attributes a lot of their victory to confidence coming into the match and to their fans.
"We came out there and we didn't waste any time," Jones said. "We had so much support from our fans," Dziekan added. "It was a long day, playing from 8:00 to 8:00. The support was an immense strength and the love and care of the fans really pulled us through."
All Sports Stories for Monday, April 10, 2000
