It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Fort Worth, and it seemed as though TCU’s women’s tennis team couldn’t get enough of the good weather.
After dominating the Oklahoma Sooners in the first three sets, the Horned Frogs stretched the match out for over an hour before securing the win against OU on Sunday.
No. 20 TCU (12-7, 4-2 Big 12) defeated No. 31 Oklahoma (11-4, 1-2 Big 12) at the Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center with a final score of 4-0.
After winning the first four of six sets in singles, the Frogs were pushed into third sets for the final win.
TCU freshman Palina Dubavets was matched pretty evenly, as she lobbed the ball back-and-forth and held onto the set for as long as she could. Every time Dubavets would miss the ball or hit the net, her opponent Zita Engbroks would scream towards Dubavets, “Come on!” Dispite Engbroks attempts at distraction, Dubavets won the tiebreaker 8-6 in the second set to finish the match for TCU.
TCU head coach Lee Taylor Walker said today wasn’t the team’s best match.
“I think it got a little sloppy there in the middle,” Walker said. “We were really close to coming out and really dominating, so there are some things we need to work on. But overall, we did really well…they’re ranked 31st in the country, so to beat a team 4-0, that’s huge, and I don’t want to take that for granted.”
The doubles points were won by the duo of Dubavets and freshman Alexis Pereira 7-5, as well as the duo of sophomore Sofiko Kadzhaya and senior Simona Parajova 6-4.
Walker said a highlight of the game was the team winning the two doubles matches at two and three. The two and three teams haven’t won in almost eight matches.
“We have won a lot of doubles points, but we always win at one and three,” Walker said. “Today we won at two and three, and we needed our two team to get some confidence, so I was happy to see them close out because they’ve kind of been in a funk lately.”
For singles, Pereira was the first to take the win with 6-1 and 6-2 sets. Pereira’s win gave the Frogs a 2-0 lead.
No. 108 Stefanie Tan was the second to finish for TCU, dominating against OU’s Lily Miyazaki with 6-1 and 6-0 wins.
“In singles, Stefanie Tan destroyed a really good player,” said Walker. “It’s hard to win at one, but she did two”.
No. 44 Parajova won her first set 6-2 and lost the second 3-6. She was winning the tiebreaker 3-2 before the game was stopped.
“I had a good start in my first set,” Parajova said. “And then I just became very soft in my second set. I stopped concentrating on my match and I was looking around on the other matches…and that’s what took me out of the match and caused me to lose my second set.”
Kadzhaya lost her first set 4-6, but turned the tables in the second, winning 6-4. Kadzhaya left the game unfinished in the tiebreaker.
Another tiebreaker left unfinished was by Seda Arantekin, who lost her first set 4-6, but won her second one 6-5.
TCU’s next game is against North Texas on April 2. Every game after Wednesday’s matchup is at home. TCU has only lost one game at home this season.
Walker said the women’s tennis team is ready to win the Big 12 Championships.
“We’re set up well for the Big 12 Championships, and our team knows it,” Walker said. “We just need to finish like our home stand. The nice thing is that we play at home for the rest of the year, so if we can win out, it’s going to set us up well to go into the Big 12 Championships.”
