The Oregon women’s tennis team ended a pair of matches in Los Angeles, California on Sunday at UC Riverside. The team sought to bounce back from its 1-6 loss against Loyola Marymount University on Friday afternoon.
This match, however, the score was swapped.
The Ducks won by a landslide 6-1 against the Highlanders and dropped their only point in singles play when freshman Madisen Olsen lost her match against Hanh Pham.
Unlike the match against LMU, Oregon claimed the doubles point with wins on both the first and second courts. Rifanty Kahfiani and Allison Mulville came off their doubles win together against LMU and brought back the momentum on Sunday, defeating UC Riverside’s Tia Elpusan and Sara Khattab 6-2 for their second straight doubles win as a duo. The senior-freshman duo of Julia Eshet and Lillian Mould took the other doubles match on court two, sweeping their opponents Mahli Silpachai and Hanh Pham 6-0.
The doubles play set the tone for the rest of the match as the team pulled out the heat and won five of six of their singles matches.
Eshet was the first to finish her match, quickly defeating Riverside’s Khattab and only allowing one point in both of her sets. The senior finished the day strong with a 6-1, 6-0 victory. Her duo partner Mould was the second match to finish, also defeating her opponent Mahli Silpachai in two sets, 6-4, 6-3. Another freshman, Myah Petchey, secured Oregon the victory after defeating her opponent in a similar fashion, winning 6-3, 6-3.
The senior Kahfiani grinded out her singles win as her match went to three sets against Natalie Shamma, where she lost her second set 7-10 to continue play into a third one. Kahfiani scraped out the victory in the third set 12-10 to give the Ducks another point. Uxia Martinez Moral also secured her singles match win in a third set against Tia Elpusan with overall scores of 6-3, 5-7, 10-6.
The team will travel back home to Eugene next weekend for a pair of home matches against Idaho and Maryland starting on Friday, and is looking to continue its momentum at home.
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