The Eastern Michigan women’s tennis team lost its home opener to Syracuse University, 4-3, Friday afternoon at the Chippewa Racquet Club.
Syracuse women’s doubles did not drop a set to EMU, winning each of the three matches.
“Syracuse is a strong team,” Coach Ryan Ray said. “The story of today is the decisiveness in Miriam [Westerink] and Julia’s [Breuss] wins today. They both have stepped up their play. Miriam had a strong match, and Julie has the talent and potential to only get better.”
Freshman Breuss and sophomore Westerink lost their doubles match against Emily Harman and Christina Tan, taking their second sets of the match into a tiebreaker, losing 8-7.
Breuss and Westerink went into their singles matches and returned the favor to their opponents. Westerink beat Alessandra Parra, 6-3, 6-1. Breuss defeated her opponent, Harman, 6-1 6-2.
In singles play EMU was evenly matched, winning three matches and losing three.
EMU’s lone upperclassman, junior Xu Chang, won the third match. Chang took the first set versus Christina Tang 6-4 but dropped the second set 1-6, setting up for a tiebreaker for the last match of the meet. With all players and fans watching, Chang won the tiebreaker 10-2.
Ray said, “Every match the comfort level will set in more; experience will come with time.”
EMU (1-4) will have a chance to shake off the loss next week when it hosts Cincinnati at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13, at the Chippewa Racquet Club.
