The Chicago State women's tennis team opened its home schedule last weekend with a pair of matches at the Homewood-Flossmoor Racquet and Fitness Club. The Lady Cougars pulled off a split of those matches, losing to Milwaukee, 6-1, on Jan. 27 and coming back two days later to defeat Bradley, 4-3.
When asked about the weekend series, CSU head coach Jack Barton stated, "We have shown great improvement from the fall season. The match against the UWM was a little closer than what the end result shows. We came out flat in doubles and tried really hard to pick it back up in singles but the Panthers are a really good team with depth and held off our charge. We carried that bitter taste into Sunday's match against Bradley and our singles play really shined. Bradley fought hard on every point, but we were able to keep it together and come out with the tough victory."
Sophomore Karyn Emeralda (Jakarta, Indonesia/) (Jakarta, Indonesia) shined for the Green and White by winning both of her singles matches in the number three position. She defeated Milwaukee's Christina Colarassi by identical 6-2 scores, and knocked off Corey Mattson of Bradley, 6-1and 6-0, to improve her dual singles record to 2-1 this season.
The match of the weekend came from junior Ruta Grinvalde (Cesis, Latvia/) (Latvia) with her three-set win over Elizabeth Przystawski of Bradley by scores of 5-7, 6-2 and 6-4. Grinvalde was up in the first set 5-4 but lost the next 3 games to lose the set. Keeping her composure, she went on to win the next two set thus winning the dual meet.
"Ruta came up very huge and fought through the pressure of knowing that a team win or loss was going to be decided on her court,” said Barton. “This fall, I don't think Ruta would have won this match, but she worked very hard and most of all she remained positive and confident coming into the spring. This made the difference between a win and a loss. I am very proud of her and her effort this entire weekend."
The Cougars improved their record to 1-2 following the win over Bradley. The next stop for CSU is in the State of Ohio where it will take on the University of Toledo on Friday and Bowling Green State University on Saturday.
~CSU~
