ABILENE – The first week of the Abilene Christian fall tennis season was highlighted by the play of its doubles teams at the Aggie and Racquet Club Collegiate Invitationals.
Freshman
Kaysie Hermsdorf and senior
Laura Mongin won New Mexico State's doubles main draw, 9-7, over the Tarleton State team of Alicia Perez and Karla Martinez, while junior
Hans Hach and sophomore Borja Cortés came away with runner-up honors in Midland, Texas after falling 8-6 in the finals to Wichita State's Matheus Pereira and Alvaro Gutierrez.
Cortés and Hach began their draw with 9-8 and 9-7 decisions over teams from New Mexico and third-seeded Riced before cruising to an 8-0 win against Arkansas. They then defeated the Wichita State pairing of Tomislav Gregurovic and Guillermo Nicol to reach the finals where they lost to the other Shocker tandem.
On the women's side, Hermsdorf and Mongin began their run with three consecutive wins over NCAA D-I teams from New Mexico (8-0), Texas-El Paso (8-6) and New Mexico State (8-3), before defeating the TexAnns, 8-2, in the finals.
Kaysie's older sister, junior
Micah Hermsdorf, led ACU in singles action as she defeated three opponents en route to the finals of the White Singles Main Draw. The elder Hermsdorf received a first-round bye to start and then defeated Marie LeBlond of Texas-El Paso, 7-5, 6-0, followed by a three-set quarterfinal win over New Mexico State's Ros-Polly Nguyen.
Hermsdorf beat Gabi Vazquez of UTEP, 6-3-, 6-3 in the semis and was supposed to have met Aggie Annemieke in the finals, but instead had her opponent switched to UTEP's Rebeca Calvillo in order to avoid a UTEP v. UTEP match-up. Calvillo went on to edge
Micah Hermsdorf for the championship, 7-6, 7-6, and also recorded wins over
Laura Mongin in the quarters and
Kaysie Hermsdorf in the semifinals.
Overall, the ACU women combined to go 10-7 during the singles main draw and later won 11 of 13 consolation matches.
In singles play at the Racquet Club Collegiate Invitational, Hach recorded the strongest showing of the four Wildcats with an appearance in the quarterfinals. Hach began with a 7-5, 6-4 win over Andre Stenger of Nebraska and then upset top-seeded Pereira of Wichita State, 6-4, 6-3, before losing in the following round to eighth-seeded Rodolfo Bustamante of TCU, 7-6, 7-5.
Cortés lost his first-round match to Gabriel Wanderley of Texas Tech, but rebounded to win twice in the consolation bracket against opponents from Tulsa and Nebraska.
Neither senior
Julia Mongin nor sophomore Brittany Reed earned a singles win at Midland, but they did combine on an 8-3 win over a Nebraska duo in the first round of doubles before losing to TCU in the quarterfinals.
This coming week, the men's tennis team will travel to Las Cruces, N.M, while the women head to Lawrence, Kan., for the Jayhawk Invitational.
