By The Long Beach State women’s tennis team wrapped up its weekend with a 4-0 victory against Saint Mary’s College on Saturday at the Rhodes Tennis Center.
Picking up where they left off after a win against Oregon on Friday, sophomores Emma Bardet and Wiktoria Rutkowska paired together to get a win in doubles.
“We really like playing with each other,” Rutkowska said. “We communicate without words.”
Rutkowska and Bardet have a team-high doubles record of 10-2 for the Beach (4-1, 1-0 Big West).
Juniors Sadaf Sadeghvaziri and Lalita Devarakonda claimed a 6-3 edge as the other doubles team to give the Beach the first point in the match.
Head coach Jenny Hilt-Costello was pleased with the teams’ performance.
“We had a strong win [yesterday] against Oregon, which is a good PAC [12] team,” Hilt-Costello said. “To follow it up the next day against a strong Saint Mary’s team, I’m obviously really happy.”
The team now sits atop the Big West conference at 4-1, with their sole loss against USC to start the season. They’ve since won four in a row.
Saint Mary’s head coach Simon Harston saw the match as an opportunity to gauge his team’s growth so far this season.
“We came out a little flat in doubles, that was disappointing,” Harston said. “But it was good seeing the girls hustle six courts and really fight back in singles.”
Harston was optimistic about his team’s performance.
“We’re a young team. We had no seniors out there playing singles and I didn’t feel like they were intimidated by the situation,” Harston said. “I saw the fighting spirit and the desire to play as well as they could in singles today.”
Long Beach looks to carry on the momentum of their four straight wins.
“I’m seeing improvement in every match that we’re playing,” Hilt-Costello said. “That’s the goal everyday, is to see improvements so we can build for April. Every year our goal is to win a Big West title.”
The Long Beach State women’s tennis team will play the University of San Diego Thursday, Feb. 20 at 1:30 p.m.
This article was updated Saturday, Feb, 15 at 10:02 p.m. to correct the final score of the match.
