Coming off a big win over rival Canisius College last Wednesday, the University at Buffalo women's tennis team was riding on a wave of confidence into the weekend, where they faced opponents Marist and Duquesne. However, their momentum hit a brick wall when the Lady Bulls lost both matches, dropping their overall record to 2-2 on the season.
The first match against Marist, played on Saturday afternoon and hosted by St. Bonaventure University, was a close contest that could of gone either way but ended in a 4-3 loss for the Bulls. UB had several strong performances in singles play, but the doubles teams struggled tremendously.
UB's first singles player, junior Karen Maynard, was overwhelmed 6-1, 6-1, by Marist's Diana Perachio, an extremely skillful player.
Freshman Michaela Kollarova picked up the slack at second singles, recording a solid 6-3, 6-1 victory over Amanda Doetsch. The win improved her singles record on the season to a superb 8-2.
The third singles match-up between UB senior Shani Amarasinghe and Marist's Kristy Salloum proved to be an intense battle, in which Amarasinghe ultimately showed her heart and ability to play in close matches, emerging victorious 7-6, 7-5.
In fourth singles, UB senior Jennifer Wong fell to Marist foe Kara Bliss, 6-2, 6-3.
Rounding out the singles play, UB freshman Erica Zielinski, playing sixth singles suffered a tough loss courtesy of Courtney McGeeven, 6-4, 6-2.
While the singles play produced some compelling matches, the doubles matches turned out to be a completely different story. UB dropped all three matches including a shocking 8-0 loss at the first doubles position. Maynard and Kollarova could not keep up with Doetsch and Perachio who thoroughly outplayed them.
The Bulls had no time to recover from their emotionally devastating loss to Marist, taking on a very strong Duquesne team the very next day. UB was overpowered and lost 7-0, a score they had won by earlier in the week.
Maynard was defeated in first singles by a score of 6-2, 6-3, losing to Alina Kilnova.
Kollarova lost the first set of her second singles match in an impassioned tiebreaker and then fell again in the second set 6-1, losing the match to Leia Zingone.
Amarasinghe lost her third singles match by a score of 6-0, 6-2 to Marina Zelenovic.
Fourth singles pitted Wong against Katie Riedinger. Riedinger took the match 6-4, 6-2.
Partelow was tossed the double zero in a 6-0, 6-0 loss to Carrie Nygard, and Zielinski lost her sixth singles match to Sarah Shanahan 6-1, 6-4.
Kollarova and Maynard teamed up in doubles to go to war against Zingone and Riedinger in the first doubles match-up. They played brilliantly, but lost 9-8 in a disheartening tiebreaker loss.
Amarasinghe and Wong stood no chance in a second doubles match in which they were vanquished in an 8-0 win for Kilnova and Zelenovic. Schule and Wittman also took a loss in their third doubles match against Nygard and Shanahan.
Kollarova commented on which loss was more painful for the Bulls.
"It was tougher in the last match, where we lost 7-0," she said. "We played well, but lost some tough tiebreakers in singles and in doubles."
The Bulls look to overcome the calamity of last weekend in their final match, Oct. 20 at Niagara University.
Kollarova sounded ready for the weekend, hoping to bring the team's final record above .500.
"Our goal is to kick their [expletive]," she said. "So I hope we play well."
