CORAL GABLES, Fla. (UCFKnights.com) – The UCF women's tennis team's historic season came to an end Saturday with a 4-3 loss to Miami, but the foundation has certainly been built for a team that reached multiple milestones this season.
"The mountain that these girls moved this program in the last year-and-a-half, two years, it's just a huge credit to them," said head coach Bryan Koniecko. "What they've been able to accomplish, I'm not sure there's been this big of a jump in college tennis before."
The Knights (20-5, 5-1) came into their second round match with Miami (18-7, 11-3) fresh off the programs first ever NCAA Championship victory Friday versus FIU and began Saturday with continued stellar doubles play to get the ball rolling.
After the Hurricanes took court No. 3, Maria Martinez and Ksenia Kuznetsova continued to cruise at the No. 1 position. The Oracle/ITA No. 61 duo took down No. 68 Estella Perez-Somarriba and Daniella Roldan.
Rebeka Stolmar and Silvia Bordes provided the doubles clinch at No. 2 with a 6-4 win over Sinead Lohan and Ana Madcur.
"We put ourselves in a great position today with a great doubles point and any team that wants to have a chance to advance needs to put up a good doubles performance and we did that," said Koniecko. "Rebeka and Moni were complete rocks for us [in singles], like they've been all year, to get us to three [points], but just fell a little short to a tough team.
Singles play opened with two Miami wins at No. 1 and No. 5. Perez-Somarriba, who is currently No. 3 in the singles ranks took down Martinez, 6-1, 6-3 and Ulyana Shirokova defeated Natalia Serrano 6-3, 6-2 to take a 2-1 lead.
Playing in her final collegiate match, senior Monica Matias evened the score at No. 4 over Ana Madcur. UCF's all-time singles wins leader was dominant, winning 6-1, 6-2.
Stolmar would make it 3-2 UCF with a 7-5, 6-2 win at No. 3 over Roldan.
The Canes would win the remaining two matches at No. 2 and No. 6. No. 69 Lohan made it 3-3 with her 6-2, 6-4 win over Kuznetsova. Dominika Paterova provided the clincher over Emilia Granstrom, 6-2, 6-3.
"Some of them that played today will be able to take a lot and got a taste of what it is like playing in the NCAA Tournament and obviously the goal every year is to step it up another level," said Koniecko. "Just the fact to have this type of pressure and with a lot of freshman on the court to be dealing with this, in this type of environment on the road, it's very difficult, but they're going to learn no doubt from this and I hope that this is just a small taste of what it could mean to advance to the round of 16 to motivate them this summer."
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