Buffs Battle at Regionals – University of Colorado Athletics

SALT LAKE CITY, UT – The Colorado Buffaloes tennis team continued to thrive at the ITA Mountain region championships at the George S. Eccles Tennis Center on Thursday, with three Buffs earning a spot in the in the next round on Friday.

For a brand-new double’s duo, Aya El Sayed and Pia Rebec are quickly proving to be a problem on the court for opponents and today it was a pair of sisters that had the unfortunate of having to face off against them. New Mexico’s Bente and Maud Vandeputte would face off against El Sayed and Rebec in the round of 32 early Thursday morning but would find there connection still couldn’t top the Buffs. A workman like effort would end up in an 8-4 victory and a spot in the next round for Colorado’s last remaining double’s team.

After the only doubles match of the day, the focus would shift to the singles courts where the Buffs would have six different athletes take a shot at moving on to the next round. For junior Mila Stanojevic that would not be an easy task going against the No. 1 seed in the tournament from BYU. Despite the effort she would be unable to come away with the upset ultimately falling 6-1, 6-3 in the second round.

Meanwhile in the Flight B bracket sophomore Anya Nelson and senior Ellen Puzak would start out the morning adding two wins for the Buffs. Puzak would cruise to the next round with a 6-2, 6-3 victory over conference rival Isabella Pitchford from Utah. Nelson on the other hand battled to the very end of the first two sets, and found a way to finish on top in both 6-4, 7-6(4) to advance as well.

Both Nelson and Puzak returned to the courts later in the afternoon in the round of 16, but did not come away with the same results. They would both end up losing in straight sets 6-2, 6-2 and 6-3, 6-1 respectively. 

Some matches the balls bounce your way, and sometimes they do not. That was the case today for sophomore Carri Hayes in her second-round match against Montana’s Hailey Murphy. In the first set neither could pull away leading to another seven-point tiebreaker. Just as the rest of the match looked, it could have gone either way, but in the end, it finished 7-6(5) in favor of Montana. Despite the tough first set loss, Hayes came out in the second set and continued to battle but again fall 6-4 to close the match.

Back in the Flight A bracket El Sayed was back on the…