ABILENE – The Abilene Christian tennis season rolls into its third-straight weekend of competition this Friday as the men head to UT-Chattanooga for the Steve Baras Fall Classic and women travel south to Houston for the Rice Invitational. Both tournaments run through Sunday.
ACU's women's team is going to Rice for the second-consecutive fall and will face many of the same teams, including Texas State, Houston and UT-Arlington. Southland Conference rivals Northwestern State and McNeese State plus Montana and Texas A&M also will part of the field.
Senior
Laura Mongin won the Flight 4 championship at last year's event and later placed third in Flight 2 doubles with
Kaysie Hermsdorf. Hermsdorf won her first two singles matches in Flight 5, but settled for runner-up honors after losing a hard-fought three-set match to Brooke Dennis of UT-Arlington, 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-3.
Kaysie's older sister, Micah, went 1-2 in Flight 2 singles and placed fifth in Flight 1 doubles with partner
Hannah Kelley.
With the losses of Mongin and Kelley to graduation, the Hermsdorf sisters find themselves with new doubles partners this fall. Kaysie and freshman
Erin Walker are off to a 2-2 start after reaching the semifinals of the Orange Flight last weekend at Boise State's Jack Taylor Classic, while Micah and junior
Brittney Reed are 3-3. Reed and
Micah Hermsdorf battled back to reach the consolation draw finals at Boise State following a tough 9-8 (3) opening round loss to a team from Montana.
In singles last weekend,
Micah Hermsdorf and Reed each went 3-1 and
Kaysie Hermsdorf advanced to the Orange Flight semifinals, where she fell in straight sets to top-seeded Maria Biryukova of Washington State, 6-3, 6-2. Walker also had a strong showing in the Orange Flight before losing in the quarterfinals to third-seeded Bobbie Oshiro of Boise State, 6-1, 6-4.
The men last played in Tennessee earlier this spring and had an incredibly tough time as injuries contributed to consecutive losses vs. Belmont (4-3), Lipscomb (4-3) and Austin Peay (6-1). On that same trip, the Wildcats started 2-0 vs. Southern Indiana and Murray State, and then won their next four matches after coming back to Texas.
Lipscomb and Belmont will be part of this weekend's field at UT-Chattnooga along with Samford, ETSU, Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, Eastern Kentucky, Tennessee Tech and Lee.
ACU had several players perform well last weekend in Los Cruces, N.M. for the Aggie Invitational led by freshman
Nico Agritelley, who reached the championship finals of his flight. Junior Borja Cortés, meanwhile, rebounded to finish in third place after falling in the semifinals and sophomore
Jason Proctor came in fifth behind his three victories.
The aforementioned Wildcats should be expected to challenge for bracket titles, as should sophomore
Nicklas Wingord, who was sideline for some of last weekend with an illness. Wingord had a very strong start to the season, winning three of five matches at the Midland Collegiate Invitational, but was forced to retire from his first match at New Mexico State and then defaulted his first consolation match to Matt Dunn or Arizona.
Double pairings for the men should remain largely the same as Agritelley and Proctor are 3-3 and Cortés and
Guilherme Gesser are 3-2 after winning the Aggie Invite's consolation draw. Another team to watch for is junior
Michael Morris and sophomore
Marco Bensley, which rallied to place fifth in their flight after starting the invitational with different partners.
