The Idaho women’s tennis team pulled off a first round upset to advance to the semifinals of the Western Athletic Conference Championship Tournament at Denver on Thursday.
The No. 5-seeded Vandals defeated No. 4-seeded Texas-Arlington 4-2 and will face No. 1-seeded Denver in today’s semifinal match at 1 p.m.
“It was a great match,” Idaho coach Myriam Sopel said. “We knew it was going to be tough. We played them two weeks ago and lost in a very tight 4-2 loss. The match was so close last time that we knew that if we kept fighting and doing the right things, we were going to win this one.”
Idaho reached an early lead after winning the doubles point against the Mavericks. Freshman Rita Bermudez and junior Beatriz Flores started the day with an 8-3 win at No. 3. Idaho went on to lose the next match when junior Alejandra Lozano and sophomore Sophie Vickers fell 8-5 at No. 2. To clinch the point, juniors Victoria Lozano and Almudena Sanz, last week’s WAC Tennis Player of the Week, won a grueling battle at No. 1, 9-8 (11-9).
Sopel said winning the doubles point took pressure off of the players during the singles matches.
“We saved four match points at number 1 doubles to win the doubles point,” Sopel said. “That was huge. The confidence and the momentum from winning the doubles point definitely carried over into singles play.”
The first singles match that finished went to UTA after freshman Belen Barcenilla lost at No. 5. Idaho followed that with two wins in a row when Victoria Lozano earned a victory at No. 1 in two sets and senior Constance Alexander won at No. 3 in two sets as well. Vickers shut out her opponent, Christine Foote, in the first set at No. 6 before losing the next two sets and taking the loss.
With two more singles matches left, Beatriz Flores sealed the win for Idaho when she won in two sets at No. 4.
Idaho improved to 13-11 on the season and has won four of its last five. With this win, Idaho avenged a 4-2 loss against the Mavericks in early April.
It was actually great to play UTA again in the tournament,” Sopel said. “You usually don’t get a chance to get revenge against a team you lost against earlier in the season. We knew what to expect because we already played them, and we put our best game forward right away, from the first point on.”
Idaho’s next opponent, Denver, is 16-3 overall and 8-0 in WAC play. Denver, which has the advantage of playing at home, shut out New Mexico State 4-0 Thursday.
In their regular season meeting, the Pioneers defeated the Vandals 6-1 in March, but Sopel said the Vandals are a much-improved team since then.
“Denver is ranked, and they get to play at home, but we are at the peak of our level, we play our best tennis, and we are so eager to win that we can beat anybody,” Sopel said.
Anthony Kuipers can be reached at [email protected]