New Mexico women’s tennis took advantage of home court to earn back-to-back wins for the first time this season.
The team failed to garner the point awarded for winning doubles play, though all three matches were tightly contested. Falling behind 1-0 in the team score didn’t seem to faze the Lobos though, as all six women raced out to win their first set in singles play.
Head coach Stephanie Wooten-Quijada said she saw the effort she wanted and gaining control of the matches early on was key.
“I was really proud of how they came back after losing a tight doubles point, and they played tough and hard,” she said. “They were very focused and that’s all we can ask for.”
New Mexico tweaked the lineup a little bit, shuffling the four through six positions. Wooten-Quijada said Rachana Bhat, who had been playing at the number six spot, has been steady all semester and wanted to move her up.
The move also put freshman Diana Wong and Cassie Chung side-by-side on the far courts, and the two seemed to feed off each other.
Wong was the first Lobo to complete singles play, dominating her match to even the team score. She played with precision and confidence and won without surrendering a single game, 6-0, 6-0.
Senior Dominique Dulski played perhaps her best tennis of the season against NMSU’s Eli Arnaudova. Dulski put herself in great positions the whole match and made use of the entire court on the way to a 6-2, 6-0 win.
The head coach said Dulski has really stepped up to find her rhythm and play through injuries in her last several matches. She showed a full array of shots, hitting several cross-court winners in the match.
Chung put the Lobos within one point of a team victory by also making quick work of her opponent. Though things were tight early, Chung bested Gabrielle Joyce, 6-1, 6-2 to make the team score 3-1 in favor of UNM.
New Mexico kept the foot on the gas pedal, maintaining leads in all three of the remaining matches, with the knowledge that it only needed one of them to secure consecutive wins.
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Bhat earned the clinching point, taking another straight-set affair over Lindsay Harlas, 6-2, 6-1.
The teams were going to play out the remaining matches, but Wooten-Quijada said she decided to pull Ludivine Burguiere, from her match which had just been extended to a third set.
Copas said she wasn’t sure at the time she was going to finish out her match, but didn’t seem to have any problems getting back into competition mode.
She was up 4-3 in the second set of her match when the clinch point was earned and picked up where she left off.
The sophomore was also the last player on the court in the team’s most recent 4-3 loss to Northern Arizona. Though she lost the match that day, she closed things out with confidence when all eyes were on her this time around.
Copas walked away with a 6-3, 6-3 win and notched the final point for the Lobos to take down the Aggies 5-2 in the team score.
She said she still felt some pressure, but things were a little bit different with the match already in hand. Copas said she learned from her past experience and wanted to move her opponent around and stay aggressive.
“This week, I worked a lot on my serve,” she said. “I took that this week into (the UTEP match) and today, and it is really working.”
The back-to-back wins improved New Mexico’s record to 3-11 and evened the home record to 2-2.
The Lobos will enjoy some rest before hosting their first conference matches. The team’s final home matches will be against Utah State and Boise State on Friday, Apr. 7 and Sunday, Apr. 9, respectively.
Robert Maler is the sports editor for the Daily Lobo. He primarily covers football and men’s and women’s tennis. He can be reached at sports@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @robert_maler.
