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Women's tennis looking toward home matches after two victories

April 2, 2014

The Spartans won both matches by a score of 4-3, improving their record to 15-4 overall and 3-2 in the Big Ten. This year, the team has the most wins — 15 — since the 1990-91 team, which holds the school record with 18 wins.

The Spartans will be back home this weekend to compete against Illinois at noon on Saturday and No. 11 Northwestern at 11 a.m. on Sunday.

To open the Nebraska match, MSU clinched the doubles point. Senior Marina Bohrer and freshman Erin Faulkner beat Nebraska’s Maggy Lehmicke and Mary Hanna, 8-5. Junior Catherine Parenteau and freshman Athena Trouillot defeated Lisa Andersson and Hannah Sulz in a 8-4 match.

MSU won the doubles points for the 14th time this season.

In the singles, the team won three of six matches, and head coach Simone Jardim called the singles play a “roller coaster,” according to msuspartans.com.

Nebraska won the first two singles matches, but Bohrer picked up her 14th win of the spring season, beating Lehmicke 6-4, 6-2, followed by Parenteau. She defeated Andersson 6-3, 3-6, 6-1 to give MSU a 3-2 lead.

When Nebraska evened the match, Trouillot came back from a loss in a tiebreaker to win the final game, getting the victory for the Spartans.

“I knew there was a lot on the line, and I would have to come up with something big,” Trouillot told msuspartans.com. “The support of my teammates was unbelievable. I told myself you shouldn’t play to lose, you have to play to win and that you are going to have to take it because they aren’t going to give it to you. So I went and took it.”

As for the match against Iowa, Bohrer and Faulkner lost their match, as did Parenteau and Trouillot. This was only the fifth of 19 matches in which the Spartans did not get the doubles point.

Bouncing back, the team won four of six singles matches, helping the Spartans win the match, 4-3.

Senior Olga Chernova won two straight sets against Iowa’s Katie Zordani, tallying her 15th win of the Spring.

Parenteau was the sixth Spartan to win at least 10 matches this spring, when she defeated Shelby Talcott in the Iowa match, 6-4, 6-4. Faulkner took down Iowa’s Morven McCulloch 6-4, 7-5, and Trouillot won the fourth MSU point by beating Iowa’s Aimee Tarun.

“After doubles, the team brought themselves together and really did it. It wasn’t us coaches telling them to get it together, they did it for themselves. It was a whole team effort,” Jardim told msuspartans.com after saying she was not happy about losing the doubles point.

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