CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The No. 8 Virginia women’s tennis team (4-0) picked up a 4-1 victory against South Carolina (1-3) on Saturday (Jan. 27) in the championship match of ITA Kickoff Weekend at the Boar’s Head Sports Club.
With the victory, Virginia earns an invitation to compete at the 2023 ITA National Indoor Team Championships, being held Feb. 10-13 in Seattle, Wash.
The match began with a tight doubles point in which all three courts went to tiebreakers. Both Julia Adams and Mélodie Collard on court one and Natasha Subhash and Annabelle Xu on court two faced set points trailing 5-3, and both won deuce points to keep their matches alive. Adams and Collard won their tiebreaker 7-2 before Subhash and Xu followed with a 7-4 win in their breaker to clinch the doubles point.
In singles, Elaine Chervinsky gave UVA a 2-0 lead with a 6-1, 6-3 win on court three. No. 20 Ayana Akli got the Gamecocks on the board with a straight-set win on the top court to make it 2-1. After winning a tight first set on court four, 6-4, Sara Ziodato went 6-0 in her second set to put the Cavaliers up 3-1. Hibah Shaikh battled through a tiebreaker, 9-7, to decide her first set, and then closed out the victory with a 6-2 win in the second against Alice Otis on court six.
Subhash was…
