RICHARDSON, Texas — In a battle between two teams participating in their first NCAA Tournament, the Southwestern women's tennis team shut out the Millsaps Majors with a 5-0 victory for the first tournament victory in program history.
Millsaps and Southwestern each earned automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament by winning their first conference championship. Southwestern unseated Trinity in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC), and Millsaps bested Centre for its first Southern Athletic Association (SAA) title.
The Majors entered the tournament as the No. 8-ranked team in the Atlantic South Region, defeating Northwestern-St. Paul 5-0 in the first round to advance to today's match with Southwestern, ranked No. 1 in the West Region.
After spending the season tweaking its doubles pairings right up to the SCAC Tournament, Southwestern faced a trio of experienced, undefeated Millsaps doubles teams.
Alli Ziehm and Emma Kesterson sailed to an 8-1 victory over Ella Shields and Marissa Brown in No. 3 doubles to open the match, handing the Millsaps duo their first loss of the season in nine matches to improve to 5-0 on the season.
Nina Mitrofanova and Mariana Quetzeri continued to show natural chemistry for a pairing with only two previous matches together, defeating Maggie Dabadie and Morris Kelly Clayton 8-2 in No. 2 doubles to remain undefeated at 3-0.
Esther Bowers and Taylor Despriet completed the doubles sweep from the top spot, besting NCAA qualifiers Grace Gaskins and Camille Fremaux in a hard-fought 8-7 victory, winning the tiebreaker 7-5.
"Taylor and Esther beating a doubles team that qualified for the NCAA Tournament is huge for us," head coach Billy Porter said. "We had all of the momentum going into singles and capitalized on it."
Nina Elez carried the momentum with a 6-1, 6-1 victory over Brown at No. 5 singles, earning her 12th win in 15 matches. Sydney Wahl clinched the match with a 6-0, 6-0 win over Shields at No. 4 singles, remaining undefeated at 15-0.
"Nine [Elez] battled near double-digit deuces at 5-1 in the second with a couple of match points. For her to finally convert was big," Porter said. "Sydney clinched on the next point on the next court over."
Mitrofanova, Bowers, and Ziehm were each ahead by a set when the match ended. Kesterson led in the second set after dropping the first.
"Getting our first-ever win at NCAAs is monumental for our program," Porter said. "We have a match against a really tough WashU team tomorrow for a spot in the Elite 8."
Southwestern improves to 16-4 with the win and advances to the Sweet 16. They will face Washington-St. Louis tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. Washington-St. Louis defeated the host University of Texas at Dallas 5-4 in Friday's first match. The two teams previously met on February 16, 2019, in San Antonio, Texas, with Washington-St. Louis picking up a 6-3 win.
