Fresh off a 7-0 sweep of Bowling Green, the Irish tennis team heads out to Malibu, CA this weekend. There, they’ll play the first leg of the 13th annual Intercollegiate Tennis Association Kick-off Weekend.
On Saturday, junior Page Freeman and freshmen Maria Olivia Castedo and Carrie Beckman led the charge for the Irish. The trio were the only ones to play both doubles and singles.
In her singles match, Freeman only had to play two sets, which held true for the entire Irish squad as the team won in straight sets down the roster. She dominated both, taking down Bowling Green’s Ioanna Tsadari 6-1 and 6-2. Freeman’s doubles partner, Castedo, won 6-1, 7-6 over Annika Vetter. Together, Freeman and Castedo won 6-1 over Florencia Fuentes and Maru Poppe.
Irish sophomore Julia Andreach and Beckman also won their doubles match 6-1 over Laura Maia Silveira and Tsadari. The only other doubles match, the Irish won 6-4 through sophomores Yashna Yellayi and Meghan Coleman.
Beckman had one of the most convincing singles performances on the day. In her straight set win, she faced Silveira again and didn’t allow her to win a single game in the second set. Beckman won 6-2 and 6-0. The only cleaner win came from senior Maeve Kocielski’s defeat of Hanna Nauman. Kocielski took down Nauman only giving up one set (6-1, 6-0).
Freshmen Nibedita Ghosh and Katherine Bellia won both of their singles matches as well, making the Irish 2-1 on the season and officially on a positive track.
Turning to this weekend, the Irish will look to snag two wins in Malibu.
The ITA Kick-Off Weekend is organized through the ITA’s approximately 1250 men’s and women’s head coaches representing over 1700 teams. The tournament plays in 15 locations with a bracket of 60 teams chosen from the 2021 season’s top 75. Each location hosts four teams and the ITA chooses locations by 2021’s top-15 ranked teams by the ITA
As the second seed in Malibu, the Irish are slated to take on the Colorado Buffalo at 1 pm on Saturday. This will be followed by a match against either Malibu’s No. 1 seed Pepperdine or No. 4 seed Columbia on Sunday depending on how both of Saturday’s games go. While these are the internal bracket rankings, the Irish rank No. 57 according to the ITA. Facing No. 61 Colorado shouldn’t be a problem. Their biggest test, however, will be tournament hosts, the Pepperdine Waves who rank No. 3 in the ITA.
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