Dawgs Take Four Sets But Fall To No. 1 Texas

SEATTLE HOSTS THE ITA NATIONAL TEAM INDOOR CHAMPIONSHIPS

Nordstrom Tennis Center and Seattle Tennis Club

Saturday, Feb. 11

Washington vs. (8) Vanderbilt, 6:30 p.m., Nordstrom

Live Match Coverage

SEATTLE – Washington went toe-to-toe with No. 1-ranked and defending national champion Texas for three-and-a-half hours tonight in the Nordstrom Tennis Center but the Longhorns ultimately secured the win to move to the quarterfinals of the ITA National Team Indoor Championships. The Huskies (5-2) took four of the six singles matches into third sets, but couldn’t close one out.

 

A close doubles point set the tone but also was won by the Longhorns, with victories at No. 2 doubles, 6-4, and No. 3 doubles, 6-3, with the No. 1 match tied at 4-4.

 

Texas had 6-1, 6-3 victories at both No. 2 and No. 3 singles, but the remaining four first sets all went to the underdog Huskies in front of a fired up home crowd, as Washington was hosting the prestigious tournament for just the second time ever and the first time since 2019.

 

Hikaru Sato, Jennifer Kerr, Melissa Sakar, and Erika Matsuda all won their first sets, but Texas responded with second set wins on all four courts. The score stayed 3-0 for nearly an hour, but finally at the No. 1 court, Texas’ Nicole Khirin defeated Sato, 3-6, 6-2, 6-3, to stop the dual. All tournament matches this weekend are suspended when one team clinches.

 

Kerr was at 5-6 in her third set with 69th-ranked Malaika Rapolu at No. 4 singles, while Sakar was up 6-5 in her third set against Taisiya Pachkaleva at No. 5 singles. Matsuda had won a marathon first set in a tiebreak against Nicole Rivkin at No. 6 singles, but Rivkin won the second and was leading, 4-1, in the third.

 

Still, the Huskies showed they can hang with one of the elite teams in the country, and now they’ll try to take that a step further into a victory over the next two days in the back draw. Tomorrow, UW will take on 9th-ranked Vanderbilt, the tourney’s No. 8 seed, again at 6:30 p.m. in the Nordstrom.

 

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