The Georgetown women’s tennis team (1-4, 0-2 Big East) fell short as they played host to No. 34 DePaul (6-3, 2-0 Big East) at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, Va., Friday night. Despite a series of close matches, the Blue Demons defeated Georgetown 5-1, with sophomore Vicky Sekely earning the Blue and Gray its only victory.

“Vicky played like she can play, beating a No. 2 player from DePaul,” Head Coach Gordie Ernst said. “That’s a really, really good win. And she crunched her.”

Sekely was the story of the night for the Hoyas. The sophomore overpowered her opponent, DePaul’s all-conference senior Selma Salkovic, winning, 6-2, 6-2. By beating Salkovic, Sekely moved to 2-1 in singles play this spring, a record that Head Coach Ernst is confident she can improve on throughout the rest of the season.

“She should feel that she can do that to a lot of players,” Ernst said. “It was great to see her finally play a match to her potential.”

Unfortunately, the rest of the team did not fare well against the Blue Demons. The matchup featured only singles play, so the extremely successful doubles pairings that had made their mark against Syracuse and Lehigh were absent.

Graduate student and captain Stephanie Wetmore lost her first match this spring, falling to all-conference DePaul senior Katarina Milinkovic in three tight sets, 6-3, 4-6, 6-3. Freshman Tina Tehrani lost to junior Gia McKnight, 6-4, 6-3. In almost an exact reversal of last week’s score, senior Alex Sebia was shut out by freshman Christiana Raymond, 6-0, 6-0. Freshman Maddie Jaeger was defeated by freshman Kelsey Lawson, 6-2, 6-1, and sophomore Samantha Martin fell to junior Cali Gustafson, 6-4, 2-6, 6-3.

“It feels nice to win, but when your team doesn’t do it with you, it’s not the same feeling,” Sekely said. “Even though I won individually, it wouldn’t make me as happy as if my other teammates had won.”

But in spite of the final score, the Hoyas came very close to their second conference win as both Wetmore and Martin had chances to win their third sets.

“Stephanie [Wetmore] went toe-to-toe with her,” Ernst said. “And that girl’s one of the best players in the Big East conference. That’s all I can ask.”

As the Hoyas return to Yates Field House for practice this week, their close loss to the Blue Demons is evidence that they have what it takes to face off against some of the nation’s best teams.

“For next week, we need to stay a little more focused when we get down on ourselves,” Sekely said.”[As for] long term goals, I would say endurance [is key].”

Georgetown’s next matchup will pit the Hoyas against James Madison at 4 p.m. on Saturday at the Bell Haven Country Club in northern Virginia.