The women’s tennis team dropped all four matches at the Virginia Commonwealth 4+1 Tournament this weekend in Richmond, Va. Although every team they played was from the East Coast, a vast majority of the individual players that overpowered the Hoyas hailed from foreign countries.
“I think the team played to their highest potential at this point, and that’s all I can ask of them,” Georgetown Head Coach Gordie Ernst said.
The Hoyas took one match in each of their contests Friday as they fell by 4-1 to both East Carolina and UNC-Wilmington. On Sunday, they were unable to win a match against tough international competitors from Virginia Commonwealth and Old Dominion.
The lone bright spot for Georgetown on Friday was junior Stephanie Cohen, who won her two matches at the No. 2 singles spot. She defeated East Carolina junior Luiza Borges 6-4, 1-6, 6-4 and came back to down UNC-Wilmington freshman Kayla Schwenk 4-6, 6-2, 6-2.
Hoyas’ junior Adriann Gin played better than her 0-2 mark for the day indicates. Gin and junior Liz Winokur forced East Carolina’s doubles team to three sets, and she took UNC-Wilmington senior Jamie deGraffenreid to the limit before losing 6-4, 1-6, 3-6.
“[The women] haven’t played since October and all of a sudden they’re getting thrown in there against scholarship players and some girls who have played professionally. But they hung in there,” Ernst said.
Much to Georgetown’s dismay, the competition Sunday did not get any easier as the Hoyas dropped two 5-0 contests to VCU and Old Dominion.
Georgetown could not deal with the foreign firepower of host VCU, winning only seven games to the 60 they lost. Five of the six players on the Fila/ITA 13th-ranked Rams hail from Eastern Europe, and the other from Canada. VCU went 6-0 in their own tournament and won every set they played.
Old Dominion swept Georgetown 5-0 in the final contest of the weekend, but Ernst took solace in several performances. Winokur, playing at No. 2 singles, fell just short of a win in the third set, losing 1-6, 6-4, 4-6 to Old Dominion junior Fernanda Luiz. Sophomore Kelsey Darnell won a set against junior Linda Garder, and Gin lost a close two-set match against junior Barbara Costa with the second set decided by a tiebreaker.
All six of Old Dominion’s players are international students, as are four of the East Carolina competitors. All told, Georgetown posted an appalling 1-13 mark in sets against players born on foreign soil, with the lone win being Cohen’s defeat of Borges.
After the weekend’s contests, Ernst said he has a better sense of what his lineup will look like as the team opens dual-match play. Winokur, Cohen and sophomore Courtney Olsen will be interchangeable in the No. 1, 2 and 3 singles spots.
Georgetown will open the dual-match season at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 3 as they welcome James Madison to the Army-Navy Country Club in Arlington, Va.
“We’re not going to see half the talent against James Madison [that we did this weekend], but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a tough match for us,” Ernst said.
Luckily for the Hoyas, everyone on the James Madison roster is from the United States.
