Women's Tennis | 1/8/2016 9:31:00 PM
ABILENE – Abilene Christian's women's tennis team begins the spring portion of its 2015-16 season Sunday at the Michael and Anne Greenwood Tennis Center in Stillwater, Okla., for matches against former Southland Conference rival Oral Roberts and 12th-ranked Oklahoma State.
The Wildcats play the Golden Eagles at 9 a.m. and the Cowgirls at 1 p.m. ORU will play its in-state foes at 6 p.m. to conclude the tripleheader at the 50,000 square-foot indoor facility built in 2014.
ACU returns five of six starters from last year's squad that went 12-6 overall and 7-4 vs. the Southland Conference before capturing three championships at the season-ending Ojai Invitational. In addition to winning the College Team Trophy, ACU's
Erin Walker won the singles title over senior teammate
Brittney Reed, and later she claimed the doubles crown alongside
Lucile Pothier, who had an exceptional fall in both singles and doubles competition.
Pothier was 9-3 in singles, which included winning the Air Force Invitational Flight 1 bracket and reaching the Round of 32 at the ITA Texas Regionals behind victories over competitors from Texas and Sam Houston State.
In doubles, Pothier posted a 7-3 mark with five of those wins coming alongside sophomore
Whitney Williams. The duo won all three of their matches at Air Force and two of three at the SMU Invitational. Williams won a second doubles crown last fall with Walker at Grand Canyon, beating two teams from GCU and another from Northern Arizona.
Walker, who led the Wildcats last spring with 18 singles victories, is a contender for the No. 1 seat vacated by Reed. She finished last spring on a nine-match winning streak, and again this fall she won her last three decisions to win the Flight 1 title at the Grand Canyon Invitational.
Walker went 8-0 with Pothier in doubles last spring and won 11 times with Williams as her partner.
Seniors
Kaysie Hermsdorf and
Nada Marjanovic also should be locks for the starting lineup. Hermsdorf won eight dual matches between the No. 2 and 3 positions last spring and was an all-conference selection in doubles after winning 20 matches with Reed. Marjanovic, meanwhile, has been one of the program's most consistent winners in the back half of the lineup over the past three seasons and was 9-1 against conference competition last spring.
OSU advanced to last spring's Sweet 16 of the NCAA Championship behind an overall record of 23-6 and this past fall the Cowgirls won both the singles (Katarina Adamovic) and doubles (Maria Alvarez and Kelsey Laurente) titles at the ITA Central Region Championships. Alvarez and Laurente are ranked ninth nationally to being the spring, while Adamovic is one of four Cowgirls ranked among the ITA's top-90 competitors at No. 27.
All three Oklahoma State doubles pairings are ranked in the top 40.
ORU, which played against ACU for one season in the Southland Conference in 2014 before moving back to The Summit League, finished 7-13 overall and 2-5 against its league last spring. One of those victories, however, was against nationally ranked South Dakota.
Oral Roberts was picked to finish fifth of seven teams in The Summit League preseason coaches' poll, which was released earlier this week.
The Golden Eagles will play a series of matches Friday and Saturday at Tulsa's Hurricane Invitational before heading west for their doubleheader Sunday in Stillwater.
OSU begins its spring season vs. the Wildcats.
