Novaceanu draws blood at Big Red Tourney

Lead by the efforts of sophomore Andreea Novaceanu the UB's women's tennis team put forth a strong showing at the Cornell Invitational Tournament.

Last weekend Novaceanu won the women's A-bracket singles title on Sunday, beating out Cornell's Tamara John, 6-4, 6-2, in the championship match.

The Big Red-hosted tournament is known as a flighted Tournament. In a flighted tournament, several players from different schools compete on an individual basis, rather than in a team format. Such tournaments hold events for both singles and doubles tennis, and no school is declared the "winner." The five other schools that competed in the tournament were Cornell, Niagara, Colgate, Army and Lehigh.

A flighted tournament also insures that the best players face one another by setting up different brackets for the highest ranked players from each team.

Novaceanu's win is her third singles crown, two of which came last year, one at Bowling Green and the other at Cornell. She was also last season's Mid-American Conference Freshman of the Year.

Novaceanu defeated Cornell's Kasia Preneta earlier that day and ousted both Rutger's Alina Balasa and Army's Amy Morganstern on Saturday.

UB Senior Kristen Ortman made it to the singles championship finals in the B bracket. Ortman beat out Liying Wang and Ashley Ebbert on Saturday, both of whom are members of the Cornell squad. Sunday in the semifinals, Ortman also faced two Cornell opponents, beating out Dana Cruite with a first-set tiebreaker, and then dropping a close match to Catherine Duboc in the championship.

UB's doubles teams also played strong, both reaching the semifinals.

While pleased with the individual players on her team, Head Coach Kathy Twist was more interested in signs of great teamwork.

"A mature coach should not just look at the wins, but the support the teammates give one another, and the team chemistry. Ours are great," Twist said.

Twist was also exited about the fitness of the team as well as their mental conditioning.

"We were the most physically conditioned team in this tournament. Some of our players had as many as ten matches in two-and-a-half days, and they played strong to the end," Twist said. "They stayed focused on every point, and had the mental strength to come right back after a missed point or a bad call."

Pleased to see that her team had kept themselves in top condition during the off-season, Twist is confident the team will play well for the rest of the season.

"They are in great shape and healthy. They've worked hard all summer and been living an athlete's lifestyle all year," Twist said. "I expect great things from all of them."

Although stratified with the outing, Twist wants her team to continue to improve as the season goes on.

"I'm happy with the team's play, but we need to learn from all of our little mistakes and stay on the right track," Twist said. "We also need to continue to develop our chemistry and keep building as a team."

The Bulls' next test will come in another flighted tournament at Bowling Green Sept. 24 and 25.

Twist feels this will be a challenge for the Bulls,

"It will be a big test, we must try to improve on last week's tournament."