It was quite a week for the Lady Warhawks. Lots of miles were put on with the team in three different cities (La Crosse, Winona, and Eau Claire) and a trip to the ITA national individual tournament for Kalla Schaefer and Alexandra Bayliss. The team was able to pull out three dual match wins to finish the fall dual season undefeated at 11-0. First let’s start with Kalla and Alexandra’s trip to nationals. They earned this trip along with All-American honors by winning the ITA regional tournament three weeks ago. Schaefer won that singles draw of 64 and also teamed up with Bayliss to win the regional doubles draw. The eight regional winners of singles and doubles from across the nation then met in Mobile, Alabama to duke it out. So there were eight singles players in the draw and eight doubles teams. Since I was busy with important conference matches in Wisconsin without two of our top players Coach Bickett made the Alabama trip. In singles, Kalla drew the #2 seed, Gabriel Clark from Emory. She lost 6-1, 6-2 and headed to the consolation side. There she first faced Knoop from Trinity (TX). It was quite a battle, and Schaefer led 3-2 in the third set before Knoop took over for a 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 win. In the seventh place match Schaefer won 6-2, 7-5 over Ave Sadeghi of Vassar after trailing 5-4 in the second set. In doubles, Schaefer/Bayliss faced the #1 seeds Chen/Chin of Carnegie Mellon. They lost 6-2, 6-1 and headed to the back draw. Their next match was one of the most up and down matches I’ve ever been a part of against Whitman. (At least I was a part of it by texting from Mr Bayliss). They lost the first set 6-1, but Mr Bayliss told me they could win at that point. They indeed turned it around and won the second set 6-0 to send it to a match tiebreak. In that tiebreak they were down 0-2, then won seven straight points to go up 7-2. They went back and forth until they were up 9-4. Just one more point, right? Not so fast. At this point I was getting point by point updates. I watch my phone as they lost 7 straight points, unfortunately, to lose 11-9. It was a heartbreaker and they could not recover to win their third match. They lost 6-4, 6-1 to a solid team from Williams College to finish 8th. To see all the result from the ITA D-3 championships go to: http://www.itatennis.com/Assets/DIII+Women+Singles+and+Doubles.pdf Back in Wisconsin each of our players moved up a spot or two in the lineup as they played La Crosse and Winona on Friday. Against La Crosse, with this new lineup, it was shaky at first. We dropped the first three doubles matches to go down 0-3. Captains Smith and Divelbiss spoke to the team between singles and doubles and told the players we were going to come back from this set back and win 6-3. That is exactly what the Lady Hawks did. We won fairly quickly at #1, #2, #3, and #6 (Hillary Franzen did great in her first huge dual match). But we still needed at least one more point to win the team match. At #4 and #5 it was pretty tight. Lauren Aguilar had dropped the first set 6-2, and Jackie Vitale was in a dog first after losing the first set 7-6. They both battled back however. Aguilar clinched the match winning the next two sets 6-0, 6-4 and Jackie, the tiebreak kid, won her match 6-7 (5), 7-6(4), 10-8! Way to go ladies! Against D-2 Winona State we still had a new lineup. This time Jackie Vitale/Abby Day stepped in for a win at #3 doubles and Kelly Foster had a solid win at #6 singles. The Hawks won this one 8-1. The only one that lost was Lauren who simply ran out of gas after winning the first set. She was on the court a long time on Friday!! To see all the results from the UWLaX match and the Winona match go to: http://www.uwwsports.com/news/2011/10/14/WTEN_1014112201.aspx On Sunday, we were back to having most of our lineup back. Schaefer/Bayless got back to the Milwaukee airport at 10pm, but really wanted to re-join the team for the dual match finally against UWEC. They drove back four hours, slept for a couple hours, then got up to join the team. Aguilar now was missing, however, as she was gone for a wedding. Against UWEC, we were able to win all the matches except for Schaefer/Bayliss at #1 doubles for another 8-1 win. I guess they were a bit jet-lagged. They recovered in time to pull it out in singles. Actually all of our singles players remained unbeaten on the year in conference play. The only one that went three sets was Smith, but came back to win the final two sets 6-0, 6-1. To see all the results from the UWW vs UWEC match go to: http://www.uwwsports.com/news/2011/10/16/WTEN_1016115532.aspx Now the fun begins!! We have our conference tournament on Saturday and Sunday at Nielsen Tennis Stadium, in Madison, WI. The successful dual season has set us up nicely with seeds. We have #1 seeds at 7 of the 9 flights and the #2 seed at the other two flights, but there is a lot of work to do. Saturday the first two rounds of doubles will be play played followed by the first round of singles. Because we have all the #1 seeds and byes at these flights we will not need to stay late into the night for that first round of singles. The doubles action Saturday will begin at 1pm. Schaefer/Bayliss will play right away. Smith/Divelbiss will play around 2pm and Kasten/Vitale will start around 3pm or so. Sunday will begin with the final two rounds of singles starting at 9am. After the singles is complete the day will end with the final round of doubles play. To go to the WIAC tournament championship website for all information including the draws, go to: http://www.wiacsports.com/sports/2011/9/27/WTEN_0927111951.aspx?id=140 Please come join us this weekend to take in some very good tennis. We’d love to see and hear your support!! GO WARHAWKS!!!!