Oregon junior Ester Bak got a little revenge sprinkled on top of her victory Monday in the Oregon women’s tennis victory over San Diego.
While at Beaverton High School, Bak lost in the 2001 Oregon High School State Finals to San Diego’s Jennifer Brown, who attended North Medford High School. Bak defeated Brown Monday in three sets, 6-4, 5-7, 6-2, to give the Ducks a 4-3 victory in San Diego.
“I’ve played her a few times and we’ve gone back and forth, but this time I was pretty confident I could win,” Bak said. “She stepped it up in the second set, but I’m a gamer.”
Oregon’s 14th win tied the single-season record for the Ducks since the Pacific-10 conference merged into nine teams in 1997, tying their win total in 2002.
The Ducks got an early 1-0 advantage, winning the doubles point, 2-1. The team of Daria Panova and Courtney Nagle, ranked No. 49 in the country, won its match, 8-4, against San Diego’s Lauren Kazarian and Brown.
The other doubles victory for the Ducks went to Anna Leksinska and Dominika Dieskova, which marked their 17th win of the season, moving them up to fourth all-time on the Oregon single-season doubles win list. They beat San Diego’s Lauren Perl and Lena Baensch, 8-6.
“It was important to win the doubles point and our match because it turned out to be 4-3 match,” Leksinska said.
In singles action, the upset of the day came in the No. 1 match. Oregon’s eighth-ranked Panova lost to 61st-ranked Emma Murphy in straight sets, 6-4, 6-2. The loss is Panova’s 10th of the year and keeps her four victories from tying her own Oregon record of 32 wins in a single season.
In the No. 4 match, Oregon senior Davina Mendiburu rallied from a 5-1 deficit in the second set to win her match against Tara Livesay, 6-1, 7-5.
Dieskova defeated Perl in the No. 2 singles match, 6-3, 6-1. The 18th win for the Oregon freshman moved her one win away from reaching the top 10 in single-season wins at Oregon.
“This was a great team effort today and gives us a lot of confidence for the rest of the season,” Oregon head coach Nils Schyllander said.
Oregon will have 10 days off until it travels to California for the third consecutive time and will play Long Beach State and Pepperdine.
“We can take a few days off, the team can focus on school and we can take care of some of our nagging injuries,” Schyllander said.