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April 24, 2008
Fort Wayne, IN - The IPFW women's tennis team looks to improve on their second seed at the Summit League Tennis Championships, hosted by the Mastodons at the Dr. Rudy and Rhonda Kachmann Tennis Center. IPFW finished with the second seed after going 7-1 in conference action and 19-8 overall on the year and will look to win the NCAA automatic berth given to the champion of the tournament. Looking to be the primary catalyst for the `Dons will be freshman and Fort Wayne native Amy Recht, who went undefeated in singles play during the conference season at No. 1, and finished the season with a 29-4 singles record. The 29 wins led the conference, as the top three individual win leaders (Recht, Hanna Hager and Stacy Lish), wore IPFW's Blue and White for the year. Lish and Hager each won 17 singles matches this year; Hager going 2-0 at No. 2, 1-0 at No. 3, 2-4 at No. 4 and 11-7 at No. 5; and Lish going 0-3 at No. 2, 5-7 at No. 3, 6-3 at No. 4 and 4-0 at No. 5. Hager went 5-1 and Lish 3-3 in Summit League matches this season. The `Dons were equally as dominant during doubles play, as the three doubles teams had three of the top four win totals within the league. Recht and Sachi Janek won a conference-high 22 matches (1-0 at No. 1, 19-3 at No. 2 and 2-1 in tournaments), with Lish and Ashley Coulson winning 17 (16-10 at No. 1, 1-2 in tournaments). Hager and Alexa Rang won 13 matches (1-0 at No. 2 and 12-4 at No. 3), equaling the total of Ashley Clark and Yana Meinert of Western Illinois. Within the league, IPFW went 16-5 in doubles matches, including 7-1 at No. 2 pairs. Matching up against the `Dons in the first round will be Southern Utah (12-6, 6-2 Summit), a team that IPFW toppled 4-3 in the regular season. IPFW won the doubles point in the match, winning at No. 2 and No. 3, before Recht, Lish and Hager all were victorious in their singles matches to secure the win. Individually for the Thunderbirds, Emmi Nelson-Bulloch, a 2006 second team All-Mid-Continent Conference selection, went 14-4 at No. 4 singles, with Carmen Blanco (12-5 at No. 5) and Kateryna Drynova (12-6 at No. 2) close behind in the win column. Southern Utah, whose last loss came at the hands of IPFW on April 5, have won their last three matches, winning against UMKC and South Dakota State in the final matches of the IUPUI cluster, before winning against Dixie State in their first and only home match of the season. The other first-round match-up will be top seed Oral Roberts and fourth seed Western Illinois, a re-match of a heated 4-2 Oral Roberts victory a weekend prior. The Golden Eagles won at singles spots 2, 3, 5 and 6, with no doubles being played. Oral Roberts (9-10) swept through the conference season with an 8-0 record, winning 6-1 over IPFW, 4-1 over Southern Utah and 4-2 over Western Illinois. The Golden Eagles struggled at the start of the season, dropping their first six matches, before beating UTEP for their first and only non-conference win, as ORU went just 1-10 in non-conference matches during the season. Leading the team in singles wins was Anna Costa, who went 8-6 on the year, 7-0 in league play, splitting between No. 3, 4 and 5 singles. Three players, Tayler Pippen (7-8, 6-1 Summit League), Hayden Rush (7-8, 7-0 Summit) and Rafaela Souza (7-7, 6-0 Summit) each won seven times in singles during the year. The first of the aforementioned trio was named to the All-League First Team last year with the other two earning All-League Second Team honors. Defending league Player of the Year and two-time All-Conference First-Team member Emily Arkell was shut out in singles matches, going 0-12 on the year, including 0-9 at No. 1. In doubles, the pair of Whitney Johnson and Pippen went a perfect 5-0 during the conference season, sporting a 5-4 overall record. Costa and Rush went 5-7 in pairs, including a 4-2 record in conference action. For Western Illinois (11-11, 5-3 Summit), the only remaining charter member of the Mid-Continent Conference (re-named the Summit League on June 1, 2007), the team is led by a trio of players (Stephanie Baumer, Clark and Kate Kennedy) with 14 wins. Courtney Brooks added 11 wins with Amanda Griffin and Meinert adding 10, giving the Westerwinds six players with 10+ victories on the season. All eight players on the active roster picked up conference wins during the 2007-08 season, including four wins by both Clark and Griffin. In doubles, the duo of Clark and Meinert went 13-10 on the year and 3-1 in the Summit League, with Baumer and Brooks going 6-1 as a pair. The tournament begins for the women at 11:30 AM when Oral Roberts faces off against Western Illinois. The IPFW/Southern Utah match is set to begin at 4:30 PM. Sandwiched between the women's matches are the men's pairings of Western Illinois vs. IUPUI at 9:00 AM and Oral Roberts vs. UMKC at 2:00 PM. Championship matches for each gender will be played on Saturday, April 26, with the men's match scheduled to start at 10:00 AM and the women's at 12:30 PM. Tournament Schedule Saturday, April 26
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