ETSU’s women’s tennis team traveled to Middle Tennessee State University on Friday, Jan. 28, where they had the first team win of the season, with a score of 7-0.
The team started off the spring season with some individual wins in matches, but this was the first time the whole team won a game.
“Confidence comes with winning, we’ve won some matches, but we hadn’t won a team match this point against a very tough schedule. But the win to seven, sweeping all doubles and all singles does a lot going forward,” said Ricardo Rojas, tennis head coach.
In singles, freshman Daniela Rivera (Maturin, Venezuela) took the first win against Noelle Mauro (Marietta, Ga.) (6-1, 6-0), followed by junior Laylo Bakhodirova (Tashkent, Uzbekistan) beating Lee Barnard (Midstream, South Africa) (6-0, 6-2). Junior Emilia Alfaro (Azul, Argentina) won against Zani Barnard (Midstream, South Africa) (6-4, 6-0). Junior Fernanda Carvajal (Queretaro, Mexico) took the last two-set win against Love-Star Alexis (Montréal, Canada) (6-3, 6-4). The last two singles matches both went three sets and a tiebreaker, ending in a win for the Bucs.
Bakhodirova has been on a roll, being named SoCon Women’s Tennis Player of the Week and SoCon Student-Athlete of the week last week. The previous week, Bakhodirova won against Abigail Rencheli (Sarasota, Fla.) from NC State (4-6, 6-0, 1-0 [10-8]). Rencheli is ranked in the top 25 of the country.
“It felt great, my teammates were supporting me throughout the whole match, coach was always supportive. I was down in the first set, came back in the second, I was down in the tiebreak in the third, but I kept believing and kept pushing through,” said Bakhodirova. “And of course, my teammates and coach played a huge role in that.”
For doubles, Bakhodirova and senior Alejandra Morales (Santiago, Chile) beat Zani Barnard and Alexis (6-2). Alfaro and Rivera beat Mauro and Lee Barnard (7-5) and senior Yunuen Elizarraras (Cuernavaca, Mexico) and Carvajal won against Muskan Gupta (New Delhi, India) and Eloise Swarbrick (Hawkesdale, Australia) (6-3).
The team is playing their first home match of the season on Sunday, Jan. 30, against Belmont and then traveling to Nashville on Friday, Feb. 4, to play against Vanderbilt.
