Nicole Hitomi Backhand 2019

Women's Tennis

Women's Tennis Competes at Beach Tennis Fall Tournament

LONG BEACH—The UC Riverside Women's Tennis Team opened the fall portion of its 2019-2020 schedule this past weekend as the Highlanders visited Long Beach for the 2019 Beach Tennis Fall Tournament. UCR gathered four singles wins and doubles wins during their first tournament of the season.

The first win of the weekend came on Friday from junior Tammy Van in Flight C of the tourney, as she defeated Raphelle LaBlanc from Pacific in two straight sets of 6-3, 6-4. Unfortunately on Saturday, Van would fall in the second round to Eira Tobrand of Cal State Fullerton 6-3, 6-2.

Friday morning, sophomore Hanh Pham dropped her first match of the weekend in Flight B to Yang Lee of Washington State, but picked up a win against Jacqueline Tsodikova of UC Irvine 6-1, 6-1. Pham battled her way back to the final of the consolation bracket, but fell to Alex Kalachova of Cal State Fullerton 6-3, 4-6, 6-3.

Senior Nicole Hitomi stood out and was able to find success this opening weekend winning Flight D. Hitomi picked up a win against conference foe Tayler Valenzuela of Cal State Fullerton 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (8). She then was able to keep her momentum in the finals and land her second win of the weekend against Laura Okazaki from Pacific 7-5, 6-4.

On the doubles side, the duo of Pham and freshman Sofia Lazzaroni found success in their first match in Flight A, picking up a win against Roenholt and Wurst of Cal State Northridge 6-2, but unfortunately dropped their second match. Pham and Lazzaroni fell to Lukic and Tanevska from Pacific 6-4. They would end the tourney with a 6-4 win over UCI's Alajeely and Mackensen.

Sophomore Lindsay Gelinas and senior Lauren Wolfe battled in their doubles matches in Flight A, dropping their first match of the day to Tumosa and Gabrielson of LMU 6-2. However, they fought through the consolation bracket and won their second match of the day against the team of Sunjic and Soares from Pacific 6-2, before following with an even stronger showing on Saturday, defeating Coetzee and Fraile Toboso of CSUN with a strong 6-0 win. The Highlander duo would reach the consolation final, but lost the match to CSUN's Roenholt and Worst.

Wolfe added a 1-6, 6-3, 10-6 singles victory over Angela Schuster of Pacific to close out the weekend.

With the first contest of the season in the books, UCR will look to build on this momentum at next week's ITA Southwest Regional.