Coming into the match looking for its first win over a ranked opponent this season, the Wisconsin women’s tennis team dropped a 4-3 decision to No. 51 William & Mary. Despite the loss, freshman Hannah Berner was a standout Sunday’s match at Nielsen Tennis Stadium.
Berner won her singles match 6-2 in the No. 4 slot against fellow freshman Nina Vulovich in dominating fashion.
“In singles today, I got off to a strong start, and the girl mentally broke down, and I was able to bounce back,” Berner said.
Berner also teamed up with junior Alaina Trgovich to help Wisconsin win the doubles point in the No. 1 doubles slot. They defeated Ragini Acharya and Katie Kargl 8-2.
Berner, though, made sure to credit Trgovich in their double victory.
“It’s been a long weekend with all the matches,” Berner said, referencing the Badgers’ victory Saturday at Marquette. “But we had doubles domination thanks to [Alaina] Trgovich.”
Berner’s leadership presence was not only demonstrated by her play. She was clearly the vocal leader on the court, always trying to motivate her teammates with words of encouragement, despite being just a freshman.
Wisconsin’s other doubles victory came in a back-and-forth thriller as Badgers Angela Chupa and Katya Mirnova faced William & Mary’s Marlen Mesgarzadeh and Lauren Sabacinski in the No. 3 slot.
The match would eventually go into a tiebreak, seeing William & Mary take a 4-0 lead.
Chupa and Mirnova had other plans however, and battled back to win the tiebreaker 7-5 to capture the doubles point. UW head coach Brian Fleishman credited his players’ ability to recover and commented on what it means for future matches.
“You can never simulate something like that… being able to come back like that in any match whether it be in singles or doubles,” he said. “I think that just makes you that much better for the next match.”
Unfortunately for Wisconsin, which dropped to 4-8 overall and 0-6 against ranked opponents with the loss, the extra doubles point wasn’t enough to propel the Badgers to victory. Yet, with a 4-3 loss, the Badgers had by far their best showing of the season against a ranked adversary.
In the No. 2 slot and final doubles match of the afternoon, the small assembly inside Nielsen Tennis Stadium watched Wisconsin junior Jessica Seyferth and freshman Kathleen Saltarelli drop the match 8-4 to Carmen Pop and Anik Cepeda.
Apart from Berner’s dominant showing in her singles match, the only other UW singles victory came from sophomore Aleksandra Markovic in the No. 5 slot. Markovic managed to hang on for a victory in straight sets 7-5, 7-6 over Sabacinski.
William & Mary came away with the other four singles match victories.
Although they appeared to have momentum from their doubles match, both Chupa and Mirnova each were defeated in singles play. In slot No. 1 Acharya defeated Chupa 6-3, 6-1. In the No. 2 slot Mesgarzadeh handled Mirnova 6-1 in the first set and finished her off 6-2 in the second set, despite Mirnova appearing to find a rhythm when she won two straight games to cut into the lead 4-2.
In singles slot No. 3 Seyferth played a strong match against Pop, falling 7-6 in a tiebreaker in the first set and 6-3 in the second set.
Finally, in slot No. 6, Trgovich fell 6-3, 6-2 to Cepeda.
After such a tough loss, Fleishman said he realized how close his team was to capturing its first victory over a ranked opponent.
“What they realize now is today they had nothing to lose and everything to gain, but we didn’t gain anything,” Fleishman said. “We let this one slip away from us.”
His solution to preventing this for the next time Wisconsin has a close match?
“We are going to put some more hours in,” he said. “The NCAA gives us 20 hours a week. We only use 14 or 15, so we have five extra hours to use.”
Correction: Wisconsin won Saturday over Marquette. Due to an editing mistake, the print version of this story said Wisconsin lost to Marquette in Saturday’s match, but the Badgers actually defeated the Golden Eagles. We regret the error.
