It came down to one match for the Minnesota women’s tennis team Sunday.
Battling a tough Indiana squad to a 3-3 tie, a player who is no stranger to the spotlight again found herself in the all- deciding match.
penn state
when: 10 a.m. Saturday
where: State College, Pa.
Ida Malmberg, a senior with more than 100 matches played for the maroon and gold, came up short in the deciding
third set, falling 6-4, to conclude the afternoon and drop Minnesota to 0-3 in the conference.
The 4-3 dual match defeat to the No. 38 Hoosiers was the second in three days for the Gophers, who fell by the same margin to unranked Ohio State just two days before.
Coach Tyler Thomson said despite the close defeats there were plenty of positives to take away from the weekend.
“The past three years in this program we haven’t even put ourselves in a position to win against the good teams in the Big Ten,” he said. “The encouraging thing about this weekend is that we played two of the top teams and we did just that.”
Perhaps a telling sign of this is Minnesota’s history with the historically tough Indiana squads. Over the course of the last two seasons, the Gophers have failed to tally a single point against the Hoosiers.
This drought was easily ended Sunday and for senior Ashley Schellhas, who also dropped a tight singles match in the third set, this is a positive step forward for the team as the conference season wears on.
“In the Big Ten, there’s no team that isn’t going to give us a run for our money,” she said. “Our matches this weekend may have gone the wrong way, but they were close. We made the other teams beat us.”
Junior Danielle Mousseau, who picked up a doubles victory with partner Karina Chiarelli, said the weekend gave the team a sense of where they are with over a month of Big Ten play still remaining.
“It’s going to go our way eventually,” she said. “We just need that break. Right now we’re showing things that I haven’t seen in all my time here.”
This is something Thomson said he agrees with.
“We’re starting to prove what I said at the beginning of the season, that we can compete with anybody in this conference,” he said. “We’re just a hair away from being one of the best in the Big Ten.”
Men’s tennis on road
The Minnesota men’s tennis team took to the road this weekend, beginning with a match against Indiana in Bloomington, Ind. on Saturday.
The afternoon began with No. 23 Minnesota taking the doubles point before proceeding with a 4-2 record in singles play.
The Gophers’ road trip next took them to Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday where they faced off against powerhouse Ohio State, currently ranked No. 2 in the country.
The match wasn’t pretty by any means, as Minnesota quickly found out why the Buckeyes are ranked where they are, falling 7-0.
The defeat leaves the Gophers sitting at 12-4 overall and 2-1 in the conference.
Senior Mikey Kantar said Sunday’s match was a learning experience.
“It was definitely sobering. We’ve never been beaten in that fashion,” he said. “What it does is give us a measuring stick on where we want to be and what we need to do to get there.”
