Johnson Women’s Tennis Earns Victories at King University Invitational

King Invitational Women 

 

The Royals women's tennis team competed this weekend at the King University Invitational, playing singles and doubles against players from five different schools. All in all, the Royals took home 5 wins on the day and competed very well against tough competition. 

The first win of the day came as the Royals took on teams from Lincoln Memorial University. Playing together for the first time, sophomore Berkley Clark and freshman Averie Stalnaker found themselves in a back and forth matchup at the number 1 position. After serving to go up 5-4, the pair was able to convert on a deuce point to take the match by a final score of 6-4. In the following matchups, the Royals saw more doubles success as the pair of Francesca Crosa and Maria Gracia Ponce and the pair of Marina Lasneaux and Kambria Gore each defeated their opponents from Lees McRae College by scores of 6-3 and 6-4. 

 

In singles, two freshmen would continue the winning trends in their matches. The first was Leanora Ceravola who was able to come out on top in a pretty convincing manner, winning 6-3, 6-2 against her opponent from Ferrum College. Shortly after, Francesca Crosa battled against a player from the host team King University, winning the first set 7-5 before finishing off the win 6-1. Sophomore Bella Stigall also found herself taking a set off of her opponent from Lincoln Memorial, but would eventually fall in a 3rd set tiebreak. 

 

Coach's Take: Coach Hale had this to say after the match, "Overall, I feel like we had a great first day to the season. We played a really tough team first up, but Berkley and Averie were able to break through against LMU and that really changed some of the momentum for us. We took that momentum well into our next set of doubles matches and then competed really hard and well in singles. We've worked really hard these first few weeks of the season and I think we saw some of the results of that today." 

 

Up Next: The Royals are back in action this upcoming weekend at the UT Southern Firehawk Shootout.