The Lady Mercer Bears tennis team came marching up the Appalachian Trail to attack the Lady Buccaneers in Johnson City Thursday. The battle had been postponed in February due to snow and bad weather. There wasn’t any snow but the Bears and the Bucs went to war in chilly weather.
Elena Volobueva and Sandie Knight drew blood first. They finished their doubles match in about 30 minutes and came out of the altercation unharmed 8-0.
Masha Ilina and Sylwia Ziolkowska were in sync with one another on the court. They played like one entity and had a feel for one another on the court the entire match. Ziolkowska with her tall six-foot-frame was an imposing force at the net. The powerful pair went on to win 8-3 securing the overall doubles point (best two out of three) for the Lady Bucs.
Tara Byrne and Olya Batsula wanted to win their doubles set to give them a moral boost going into singles play. The conflict between them and Mercer’s Pazsoldan and Blount took almost one hour, but Byrne and Batsula outlasted the feisty bears 8-4.
In singles play Ziolkowska baited the bears first. The Buccaneer senior must have been in a hurry, she won her match in record time 6-1, 6-0. After the victory Ziolkowska ran off to finish an assignment for one of her classes.
Batsula was aggressive from the baseline and finished her singles match strong at 6-2, 6-0.
Byrne won her match against Mercer’s Kerley 6-1, 6-2 and joined her teammate Batsula on the sideline to root for Masha and Elena.
Ilina used her arsenal of weapons to keep her opponent at bay. Ilina’s slice shot was effective early and she won her first set 6-1. Teresina Pezsodan, a senior from Mercer, would bite back and take a lead in the second set. Ilina dug deep and defeated Pezsodan with great shot placement in the second set, 6-2.
Volobueva had a tough time with Lauriane Auvergne. Volobueva has a forehand shot that whistles through the air like a rocket, but Auvergne was knocking those shots right back at Volobueva. Volobueva finally got the bounce in her step back late in the second set and went on to win her match 6-3, 6-4.
Vita Moskaliova had to wait for a court to open up to start her match. When the court became available she rushed for her rackets and jogged over to the free court.
The match would not go as quickly. The hard-fought battle between Moskaliova and Karen Bellman would go to the tiebreaker.
The sun started to set and the temperature went down but Moskaliova’s determination was on the rise. She clawed her way to a 6-0, 6-7, 10-8 finish to give the lady Bucs a 7-0 win over Mercer.
The Lady Bucs tennis team won 7-0 against conference foe Gardner Webb also. The win on Friday against the Lady Bulldogs secured an undefeated season for ETSU in regular season conference play.
The women accomplished something never before done at East Tennessee State: they never lost a single match in the conference contest

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