The
top-ranked University of Florida women’s tennis team opened its 2011-12 dual
match season with a 7-0 sweep against Troy at Linder Stadium at Ring Tennis
Complex on Wednesday and presented head coach Roland Thornqvist with his
250th victory with the elite program.
The
Gators extended their overall win streak to 22, their overall home winning
streak to 96, as well as their regular-season home win streak to 103.
Wednesday’s
outcome also marked the 250th victory for Thornqvist, who is in his 11th season
with the Gators. The win was the 325th of his 16-year collegiate career, as he
has compiled a 250-30 ledger in Gainesville and improved to 325-80 overall.
“We
haven’t played as a team in a while so I thought some of our players looked a
little nervous, but overall I was very pleased and thought we looked better as
the match went on today and that was the most important thing,” Thornqvist
said.
The
Gators won all three doubles matches in under an hour and took a quick 1-0 lead
in the team scoring.
Junior
All-American Lauren Embree (Marco Island, Fla.) needed just 45 minutes
to blank Olfa Dhaoui 6-0, 6-0 at the number two spot, where she posted the
third double-bagel singles win of her career.
“Roland
just told us to go out there and execute and that’s what we did today,” Embree
said. “He told us to try and stay aggressive no matter where we were in the
match and try and take control of the match and that’s what I did. I was pretty
happy with how I played today. I felt like I played aggressive tennis and
served really well, which was important for me because that’s what I’ve been
working on a lot.”
Sophomore
Sofie Oyen (Leopoldsburg, Belgium) won her fourth consecutive singles
match as she defeated Rosaura Ramirez-Vega, 6-1, 6-2, and gave Florida a 3-0
lead in the team scoring.
Junior
Caroline Hitimana (Waterloo, Belgium) was next off the court and
provided the clinching dual match victory with a 6-0, 6-1 win in 62 minutes.
Moments
later, sophomore Olivia Janowicz (Palm Bay, Fla.) posted a 6-1, 6-2 win
against Candela Munoz-Giron on court four.
Also
punching in their respective first dual match singles victories of the season
where sophomore Alexandra Cercone (Seminole, Fla.) and junior
All-American Allie Will (Boca Raton, Fla.) capped the perfect
opening-day sweep with straight set wins.
Cercone
played a career-high No. 3 singles for the second time in her career and dropped
Lyubov Dorofeeva, 6-2, 6-0, while Will improved to a perfect 6-0 on the singles
court this year, as she downed Karoline Grymel, 6-2, 6-1.
The
Gators won all three doubles matches, sweeping courts two and three, 8-0, while
the number one team captured an 8-3 victory.
“We
hadn’t practiced that much doubles so I was pleased to see that we were very
aggressive in our play,” Thornqvist said. “(Cercone and Janowicz) in particular
used their first serve very well. Our doubles play was what I was most
interested to see.”
The
Gator’s No. 15-ranked team of Lauren Embree and Joanna Mather (Duluth,
Ga.) needed just 26 minutes against El Isissen and Candela Munoz-Giron to earn
the first individual victory of the dual match season, while Alexandra Cercone
and Olivia Janowicz clocked in their 8-0 win 10 minutes later on court three
against Olfa Dhaoui and Rosaura Ramirez-Vega.
On
court one, four of the first five games were breaks, with Florida’s
tenth-ranked pair of Sofie Oyen and Allie Will holding on the opening serve of
the 8-game pro-set. With the match on-serve entering the eighth game, the
Gators earned their third break, before Will held for a 6-3 lead. UF then
powered through the final two games for the 46-minute, 8-3 win.
