The University of Rhode Island women’s tennis team had a pair of in-state matchups this weekend against Providence College and Brown University, and split the matches by defeating Providence, but losing to Brown.
The Ocean State rivalry goes beyond the 94 feet of hardwood at the Ryan Center and Amica Mutual Pavilion, and was on full display Saturday as PC and URI took to the courts in Warwick. The Rams have defeated the Friars in their last six matchups and haven’t lost to their in-state rival since 2016.
URI would secure the doubles point to take an early 1-0 lead. The first-year pair of Grace Darcy and Anastasia Pettersson won their match 6-2, and fourth-year Klara Nelander and third-year Sophie Herrman were also victorious on the doubles court, picking up a 6-3 win.
Darcy, Pettersson, Nelander and Herrman all picked up straight-set wins in singles. Third-year Nikki Fernando and first-year Katharina Speith would join in on the trend and allow URI to go a perfect 6-0 in singles play, while not losing a single set. Despite also picking up the doubles point, URI Head Coach Jonas Brobeck was more satisfied with the way the team performed in singles.
“I’m really happy [with] the way we set the tone in singles,” Brobeck said. “We weren’t super happy with the way we played doubles against PC, but I’m happy how we reset and set the tone of each and every court in singles.”
With its win over the Friars, URI extended its winning streak on the season to four straight and improved to 8-1 on the season.
“It’s great to see the girls are really coming together,” Brobeck said. “Understanding their identity and trusting their game plan, and more importantly… trusting when we are playing good tennis, that’s good enough [and] you don’t have to overplay to be successful.”
URI would shift its focus to another in-state rival, in hopes of starting the season 9-1 for the first time in over 15 years. Rhody was also attempting to beat Brown for the first time in program history; the Rams are 0-9 against the Bears dating back to 2010.
Brown was able to win the doubles point and go up 1-0. In singles, Speith and Fernando would pick up where they left off on Saturday, both winning their match in straight sets. But despite efforts by Darcy and Pettersson, who took their matches to a third set, both came up short. Herrman and Nelander would also lose their singles matches. Brown took home the win 5-2, and Rhode Island fell to 8-2 on the year.
“It was a tough loss because it came down to a couple of really close matches, which really could have gone either way,” Darcy said. “But at the same time, it was really good to have such a competitive match.”
Despite the final score, the match was very close and came down to only a few games. It’s also the smallest margin of victory for Brown against URI in its history.
“I know we were at that level,” Brobeck said. “I know if we competed really hard and believed that, we could have beaten Brown, and it showed. We didn’t win; unfortunately, we were really close, and that was a good testament to the girls believing in our program and believing in what we’re doing.”
Rhode Island will have 10 days off before it takes a trip to Louisiana to play Northwestern State University, The University of New Orleans and Nicholls State University.
