ORLANDO, Fla. – The No. 15 UCF women's tennis team picked up a victory over the No. 18 Texas A&M Aggies by a score of 5-2 on Sunday afternoon. The Knights won doubles with relative ease and battled through some tough singles matches to claim thier second "Power 6" win of the 2020 campaign.
"I thought we started out really well in doubles," said UCF head coach Bryan Koniecko, "All courts did a pretty good job to set the tone early. Texas A&M came back and fought hard, they made it really tough."
The Knights came out strong in the doubles segment, taking leads on all courts. Domenika Turkovic and Evgeniya Levashova were the first to win their match on court two, topping No. 20 Lucia Quiterio and Jessica Anzo with ease by a count of 6-2. Court one would seal the doubles point as No. 3 Rebeka Stolmar and Marie Mattel defeated No. 47 Tatiana Makarova and Jayci Goldsmith 6-3. The third doubles court went unfinished as Valeriya Zeleva and Nadja Bay Christians led Dorthea Faa-Hviding and Riley McQuaid 5-3.
The energy continued into singles play, where No. 40 Zeleva would strike first. She didn't disappoint in her season debut at the No. 1 spot defeating Katya Townsend 6-2, 6-2. Texas A&M answered back quickly as Faa-Hvidiing topped Bay Christians on court four 6-1, 6-1.
UCF pulled within one of the match clincher as Sara Culbertson won in straight sets on court six, a 7-5, 6-3 win. The scoreboard remained at 3-1 in favor of the Knights for a while, as all remaining courts carried into third sets.
Texas A&M grabbed a singles point on court three as No. 94 Makarova defeated No. 54 Mattel 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Moments after the defeat on court three, the Knights clinched the match as Turkovic collected the fourth team point of the match. She beat Quiterio on court five in a tight 6-1, 3-6, 7-5 decision. The third set was a seesaw battle, but Turkovic was able to power her way to the victory to snap UCF's two-match losing skid.
The two sides decided to play out the final court, which was already underway at the time of the match clincher. Levashova was in tough spot in her second set, finding herself down 5-1 after falling in the first set 7-5. In the blink of an eye, momentum switched as Levashova survived at least 10 match points as she rallied back to win the second set 7-5. She went on to win a tight third set after being down 3-0 by a count of 6-4.
"For Evgeniya to just stay alive and win that second set after being down 5-1 took a lot of pressure off the rest of the team," said Koniecko, "That was huge for us."
The victory is the first over a ranked opponent this season. It is also the first time the two sides have met on the tennis court as UCF now leads the all-time series 1-0.
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UCF will play Nebraska, TCU and UC Santa Barbara the weekend of Feb. 14-16. Exact times and dates have yet to be announced.
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