Shockers fall to Jayhawks 5-2
Wichita State Junior Guilia Guidetti takes a backhand swing in a singles match Friday against Kansas. The Shockers lost to the Jayhawks 2-5, ending Wichita State’s 34-match home win streak. (Feb. 17, 2017)
Friday’s matchup with KU did not end well for the Wichita State women’s tennis team.
The Shockers lost 5-2 to the Jayhawks, losing the doubles point and four singles matches.
“Across the board [KU] played well, so they took it to us pretty good in the doubles and even in the singles,” head coach Colin Foster said. “They got off to a quick start. They got the first set in the singles and we did a good job to compete.”
The doubles matches moved quickly with senior Tanaporn Thongsing and sophomore Ting-Ya Hsu losing their match 6-2 and junior Gabriela Porubin and freshman Fatima Bizhukova losing their match 6-1.
Between the doubles and singles matches, Foster was able to spend a few minutes encouraging the team to stay focused on playing until the end of the match.
“I told them, ‘when you get down, let’s really show them a fight,’” Foster said. “I thought we did a really good job of that in the singles. We lost five first-sets and could have easily gone away on every court. … We were competing and fighting to the last point.”
Thongsing was the only Shocker to win the first set and took the entire match in two sets. Hsu lost both her sets. Freshman Marta Bellucco took her match to the third set, but lost to Maria Toran Ribes.
Bizhukova lost her first set, 3-6, against Janet Koch of KU, but pushed to win the second and third sets 7-5 and 6-1 to win the match.
Porubin also extender her match to three sets, but lost to Tess Bernard-Feigenbaum, 3-6, 6-3, 2-6.
Junior Giulia Guidetti, ranked 113th nationally by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, had a difficult match against Anastasia Rychagova who is ranked 50th nationally.
Guidetti dropped both sets to Rychagova, 6-3, 6-1.
“It was just a tough match for Giulia,” Foster said. “She had some chances here and there to kind of make the score more competitive. I know she was disappointed to not have a closer match, but she was in there getting good points and I thought she had a good game plan.”
The Shockers, now 4-2 overall, head to Fayetteville, Arkansas for matches against Cornell (3-3) and Arkansas (6-2) on Monday.
