ABILENE - Abilene Christian's men's and women's tennis teams begin a stretch of five matches in six days Saturday when the Wildcats play host to the Vikings of Cleveland State at the Teague Events Center.
The men's dual will begin at 8 a.m. followed by the women's match, which will start around noon.
The Vikings are a NCAA D-I member of the Horizon League, which includes an earlier Wildcat opponent from this season, Wright State. ACU's women's team defeated the Raiders 4-3 in Dayton, Ohio for their first dual win of the season and have continued to play well ever since as the Wildcats enter this weekend at 7-2.
Prior to taking last week off from competition, the ACU women recorded a very successful road trip by winning all three of their duals against Southern Mississippi, Texas-El Paso and New Mexico State. ACU defeated the Miners and Southern Miss in El Paso by matching 5-2 scores, and came from behind to top the Aggies in Las Cruces, N.M., 4-3.
Two days afterward, senior
Micah Hermsdorf was honored with the Southland Conference's Player of the Week award as she won all but one of her singles matches. Her results lifted her No. 1 singles record to 7-2 and No. 1 doubles mark with sister
Kaysie Hermsdorf to an unblemished 8-0.
The Wildcats own an impressive 32-22 (.593) singles record through their nine dual matches and are an incredible 20-6 (.769) in doubles. Behind the undefeated Hermsdorf sisters are the No. 2 team of Brittany Reed and
Erin Walker, and the No. 3 tandem of
Emily Conrad and
Nada Marjanovic, each of which has a 6-3 record.
In singles competition, Marjanovic - a sophomore - is tied with
Micah Hermsdorf for the most dual victories with seven. Five of her wins have come at the No. 5 position, while the other two have come at No. 4 singles.
The men's team, meanwhile, went 1-1 on the road two weeks ago as it followed a 6-1 defeat at New Mexico State with a 4-0 win over Western New Mexico that puts the Wildcats' season record at 5-6.
Junior Borja Cortés, sophomore
Jason Proctor and freshman
Nico Agritelley lead their team with six dual wins, but the team as a whole has a combined singles' record of 27-36 (.429). The Wildcats, however, are playing better in doubles with an overall record of 19-14 while utilizing eight different combinations.
Cortés is 6-5 with partners
Nicklas Wingord and
Guilherme Gesser at the No. 1 position, and at No. 2, Gesser and Agritelley are 6-3.
Following Saturday's doubleheader, both Wildcat teams take off on a five-day Southland Conference road trip that will bring them to Incarnate Word Sunday, A&M-Corpus Christi Monday, New Orleans on Wednesday and Southeastern Louisiana Thursday (women only).
Corpus Christi's men's team won the 2013 Southland Conference championship and its head coach Steven Moore was named the Texas Region's Coach of the Year by the ITA.
The ACU women were to have played defending conference champion Northwestern State earlier this week, but because of travel issues experienced by the Lady Demons on their way to Abilene, that match has been postponed to March 21.
