Category: women’s tennis

Quartet of Lady Gators tennis players earn SEC post-season awards

Here are the four Florida standouts on the women’s circuit this postseason.

The Florida women’s tennis program got some good news on Wednesday when the Southeastern Conference announced the 2024 postseason awards, which included a quartet of Gators: [autotag]Rachel Gailis[/autotag], [autotag]Carly Briggs[/autotag], [autotag]Qavia Lopez[/autotag] and [autotag]Malwina Rowinska[/autotag].

Seventh-ranked sophomore Gailis was named to the First Team All-SEC Team after posting a 21-6, 9-2 SEC record while tallying seven wins over nationally ranked opponents. Briggs, who is ranked No. 57 in the country,  was selected to the All-SEC Second Team holding an 8-2 conference record, including an undefeated run at the SEC Tournament.

Lopez was selected to the All-Freshman team after an impressive first season in Gainesville, becoming the ninth in program history to be named SEC Freshman of the Week twice and the first Gator to earn the honor three times. Rowinska was also named to the All-Freshman team after an impressive campaign on the doubles side with partner Alicia Dudeney.

First-team and second-team All-SEC honorees, All-Freshman team, along with Player, Coach and Freshman of the Year were chosen by the league’s 14 coaches. Coaches cannot vote for their team or players, and ties are not broken.

First Team All-SEC:
Carolyn Ansari, Auburn
Ariana Arseneault, Auburn
Carolina Gomez Alonso, Arkansas
Rachel Gailis, Florida
Dasha Vidmanova, Georgia
Ayana Akli, South Carolina
Sarah Hamner, South Carolina
Sofia Cabezas, Tennessee
Nicole Khirin, Texas A&M
Mary Stoiana, Texas A&M
Mia Kupres, Texas A&M
Celia-Belle Mohr, Vanderbilt

Second Team All-SEC:
Anne Marie Hiser, Alabama
Petra Sedlackova, Alabama
DJ Bennett, Auburn
Angella Okutoyi, Auburn
Carly Briggs, Florida
Anastasiia Lopata, Georgia
Alexandra Vecic, Georgia
Mell Reasco, Georgia
Guillermina Grant, Georgia
Aran Teixidó Garcia, LSU
Catherine Aulia, Tennessee
Elza Tomase, Tennessee
Lucciana Perez, Texas A&M

All-Freshman Team:
Malwina Rowinska, Florida
Qavia Lopez, Florida
Aysegul Mert, Georgia
Julia Zhu, Kentucky
Kenna Erickson, LSU
Lucciana Perez, Texas A&M
Valeria Ray, Vanderbilt

Player of the Year:
Mary Stoiana, Texas A&M

Freshmen of the Year:
Lucciana Perez, Texas A&M

Coach of the Year:
Drake Bernstein, Georgia

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Florida women’s tennis defended its home court against Ole Miss

The No. 14-ranked Gators needed all it could get to overcome their visitors on Sunday.

The Florida women’s tennis program closed out its seventh straight win on Sunday with a narrow 4-3 win over the visiting Ole Miss Rebels at the Alfred A. Ring Tennis Complex in Gainesville.

The No. 14-ranked Gators needed all it could get to overcome their visitors.  The opening win came from doubles pair Rachel Gailis and Bente Spee, who defeated Kelsey Mize and Lucie Devier in a 6-1 effort.

But the Rebs were quick to respond, with Anaelle Leclercq and Ludmila Kareisova posting a 6-3 win over Carly Briggs and Qavia Lopez to knot things up. Malwina Rowinska and Alicia Dudeney clinched the doubles point for the Gators after an epic battle with Ava Hrastar and Briana Crowley that came down to a tiebreaker with the Orange and Blue coming out on top with a 7-6.

With Florida up 1-0 heading into singles action, Ole Miss did not let up.

No. 15 Rachel Gailis secured the first point to extend the Gators’ lead 2-0 with a win over Kareisova but Crowley defeated Florida’s No. 109-ranked Lopez, making it a 2-1 affair. The Rebels then tied the match at 2-2 with Rachel Krzyzak defeating Sophie Williams in straight sets.

No. 84-ranked Briggs gave UF the edge with her three-set win over Ava Hrastar but Ole Miss caught up with Florida once again with Emma Kette defeating Rowinska in a three-set battle, setting a 3-3 score going into crunch time.

Dudeney secured the victory after a back-and-forth battle with Leclercq,  dropping the first set, 7-5, but storming back to post a 7-5 win to force a third set. Dudeney left no room for doubt as she shut out Leclercq 6-0 to snag the fourth and final point.

“I honestly thought we played subpar today but we competed well, and obviously Liss was clinical at the end,” head coach Roland Thornqvist offered after the match. “The quality of our play probably wasn’t great and part of that was Ole Miss made it difficult for us with some playing styles that they had that we didn’t adjust to. I told them in the locker room that this is a match we would have lost in February, but we are now finding ways to win instead.”

The Gators will travel to face the No. 27 Vanderbilt Commodores on Friday at the Brownlee O. Currey Jr. Tennis Center. The ‘Dores moved to a 6-3 conference record after posting a 4-0 win on Sunday against Missouri.

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Gators women’s tennis adds international standout to roster

The Lady Gators will get a boost from a top European tennis player this coming season.

The Florida women’s tennis team added [autotag]Malwina Rowinska[/autotag], a native of Warsaw, Poland, to its roster for the upcoming season, according to an announcement made by head coach Roland Thornqvist on Saturday.

The 5-foot-4-inch amateur currently sits at No. 81 in the World Junior Rankings, having recorded 818.5 points over 42 career tournaments; Rowinska’s highest ranking was No. 51. She was also ranked seventh in U16 and tenth in U14 before gaining two singles titles in the U18 category.

The 18-year-old most recently stood out at the European Junior Championships, where she and her partner Zuzanna Pawlikowska made it to the doubles finals. Rowinska currently holds 11 doubles titles in the U18 category as well as four national championships in singles, doubles and team play.

She also earned a 2022 US Open doubles quarterfinal appearance, and competed at the Australian Open Juniors and Wimbledon. The Polish standout will fit in well with the others in Florida’s women’s tennis program this coming season.

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9 former Gators who were forgiven for leaving school early

Pat Dooley takes a look at nine more former Gators who were forgiven for leaving school early.

There was a time when college athletes who were draft-eligible had two options — turn pro or stay in school.

Today’s athlete has more to choose from with the transfer portal and the luxury of exploring the draft in basketball without necessarily leaving.

Of course, any time an athlete leaves early, there is some despair from the fan base. Not always though.

Sometimes the feeling is that we can understand why the player is moving on because it was time for him or her to try something else. It wasn’t working. Basketball player James White comes to mind.

Other times, we just want to tell them, “Well done,” and root for them at the next level.

Always remember that whatever these athletes choose to do, it’s their decisions and their lives. Whether they make the right or wrong choice is something they will have to live with.

It does affect the fans and sometimes can cause a coach all kinds of roster management issues. But it’s a new world in college sports.

That’s a long way of getting to the second part of our series on players who left early but were never vilified for the decision. We were happy to have them for as long as they were here.

Plus a few more that we wondered what the heck they were thinking.

OSU women’s tennis defends its Big Ten championship

Back-to-back titles for the OSU women’s tennis program. #GoBucks

The Ohio State women’s team took home its second-straight Big Ten regular-season championship over the weekend, making it a double for both the men and women this season (and last).

The OSU women did it by sweeping Rutgers 4-0 over the weekend, to polish off a perfect 11-0 campaign in the conference. Five of the six contests resulted in sweeps for the Lady Bucks for a team currently ranked No. 10 in the nation.

Ohio State will now turn its attention to the upcoming Big Ten tournament set to take place beginning on Wednesday in Iowa City. Needless to say, the Buckeyes will be the No. 1 seed and overwhelming favorite before it looks to do damage in the NCAAs.

With all the success of both tennis programs at Ohio State as of late, if you are a youth tennis player in the Midwest or beyond, you could do a lot worse than honing your craft in Columbus.

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