Over the weekend, the University of Rhode Island women’s tennis team competed in the Bruno Classic at Brown University, competing in individually-scored matches against the University of Connecticut, Yale University, Boston College and Dartmouth College.
On the first day of action on Friday, URI wasn’t able to get in the win column, dropping all three doubles matches and all six singles matches.
Third-year Nikki Fernando and first-year Katrina Spieth were defeated 6-3 by Yale’s pair of second-year players, Shyla Aggarwal and Erin Ha. First-years Grace Darcy and Anastasia Pettersson were defeated in doubles, falling by a score of 6-2 to the team of third-year Alex Torre and fifth-year Nada Barteck from Boston College. Then, Fourth-year Klara Neylander and third-year Sophie Herrman lost a closely-contested match, 7-5, against first-year Angela Huang and third-year Sofia Zaslow from Yale.
In singles play, Zaslow also defeated URI third-year Ava Grnja in straight sets, 6-2, 6-3. Huang also won her singles match, knocking off URI second-year Stephanie Hylton in another straight sets win. All other singles matches would also end in a loss for the Rams.
“I thought this weekend was really good progress-wise,” Herrman said. “I feel like we’ve been working on a lot of things as far as expanding my game and I feel like those things are going pretty well.”
On Saturday, URI found more success. Fernando went 2-0 on the day, winning in doubles and singles. Fernando and Spieth won their doubles match against Dartmouth’s fourth-year Elizabeth Fahrmeier and fifth-year Lexi Dewire 6-1. This would be the only doubles win on the day for URI. Darcy and Pettersson lost 6-4, while Nelander and Herrman had another close match but came up short in a tiebreaker. Fernando was the lone winner in singles play, defeating Dartmouth first-year Lauren Han 7-5 and 6-0.
“It’s great to see her [Fernando] growth,” URI Head Coach Jonas Brobeck said. “She’s been truly believing in her game and she’s playing on her terms and mixing up what she can do with her gamestyle. She is such a tough out.”
On Sunday, Fernando carried over the momentum from Saturday, earning her team-leading fifth singles win this fall. She defeated UConn fourth-year Isabel Petre Bere in two sets, 6-2, 6-0. Spieth’s singles match went three sets, but she couldn’t come up with the win, falling to UConn’s fourth-year Maria Constant. Fernando once again was the lone winner on the day, but this time only in singles as URI lost all three doubles matches.
“There were some results that we were not happy with and some results that we were happy with,” Brobeck said. “That’s always the case in these fall tournaments when we play a lot of matches, it’s so valuable getting these high-quality matches against high-quality teams multiple days in a row we will be better from it.”
The team will be splitting up next weekend, with two singles players and one doubles team headed to Davidson, North Carolina for the Atlantic 10 Individual Championships. The rest of the team will stay in Kingston to host the URI Fall Invite.