Sports > March 20, 2008

By Danny Mullins | Contributing writer

While the rest of us were headed to the beach for Spring Break, the Wake Forest women’s tennis team kicked off their ACC season with two home victories over Virginia and Virginia Tech March 8 and 9. These were two very important wins as the team, which is now No. 30 in the country.

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Junior Ana Jerman returns the ball during a match against TCU March 6. The Deacs lost 5-2. Jerman and doubles partner Sierra Poske lost 8-3. (Kelly Makepeace/Old Gold & Black)

The team was coming off of three consecutive losses.

Sophomore Sasha Kulikova played extremely well during the break continuing her great season as the No. 2 seed for the Lady Deacs.

On the year, she is 10-1 and the sophomore looks to be headed for a terrific season.

The team beat Virginia 5-2 on the first Saturday of break and then took care of Virginia Tech 6-1 the next afternoon.

The score against Virginia Tech is a little misleading as three of the singles matches ended in super-tiebreakers.

Fortunately, Wake Forest ended up winning all of those tiebreakers with the most highly contested one coming between the two No. 1 seeds for both teams.

Senior Alex Hirsch of Wake Forest was able to fend her opponent Inga Beermann off in the tiebreaker 18-16 after winning the first set 6-4 and than dropping the second set 4-6.

Several Deacons won both of their matches that weekend including the aforementioned Kulikova, junior Christian Tara and freshman Emilee Malvehy.

After the two home matches against ACC foes, the women’s tennis team did get an opportunity to enjoy their Spring Break by heading to San Diego to play the San Diego State Aztecs March 13. Again the Lady Deacs earned a solid victory by winning 5-2 overall.

The highlight of this match came from sophomore Aileen Davis who played her first singles match of the season as the No. 6 seed.

She seemed calm, relaxed and ready to play because she pounded her opponent Ozge Atalay 6-0, 6-0.

Sierra Poske, the normal No. 4 seed for the Deacs did not play but the team proved they could win without her with Malvehy, the typical No. 5 seed and Katarina Reveche, the normal No. 6 seed, each moving up a spot to play.

Reveche won her match and Malvehy was up in the third set 3-2 before she was forced to retire from the match.

This earned the Lady Deacs three solid victories during Spring Break to improve to 6-5 on the season.

However, it is only going to get tougher for the team as their next seven matches are all on the road. Their next match will be March 22 at Maryland.

The next time the team will have a home game at Leighton Stadium will not be until April 11 against Florida State.

The Lady Deacs played extremely well during Spring Break and let us see if they can continue their winning streak with an unenviable next month coming up.

One thing is for certain, they are going to need our support in April after having to play away from home for such a long period of time.