By Jimmy Chau
Assistant Tennis Coach
PORTLAND, Ore. - The #31 Lewis & Clark women's tennis team continued its Northwest Conference winning streak on Saturday with an 8-1 win over Whitworth.
Doubles action started out tight as both teams battled back and forth through breaks of serve. No team would ever go up by more than two games as both squads went toe to toe. It was the Pioneers though who would find the first break and hold at the three slot where Aurora Garrison and Wiktoria Plawska found the break, hold, break combo needed to go up 7-4. They would close out the 8-5 win first as both of the other Pioneer teams would go up 6-5 as well.
Summer Garrison came up in the clutch with a couple beautiful drop volley winners after teammate Claudia Lew set her up on consecutive points. A 8-5 win at two doubles had the Pioneers in good shape and a third was on the brink as the #10 team in the region, Christine Eliazo and Kacey Incerpi, stepped up to serve at 7-6. Unfortunately, the duo of Taylor Pena and Jennifer Adams would just not go away and scrapped their way back into the match with some solid play and quick reflexes and scored the upset win 9-7 to keep the Pirates in the dual match.
Upset with their play in doubles, the Pios came out red hot in singles action. Plawska and Incerpi lead the charge with solid game plans to take out Saryn Mooney and Adams respectively only dropping seven games between the two of them. Up, 4-1, the next point would come via the #10 ranked singles player in the region, S. Garrison who stayed aggressive throughout her match to take a 6-1, 6-3 victory over Pena to give the Pios the match. Sister Aurora would follow after with a much tougher 6-2, 6-2 bout with Bella Hoyos. Lew had cruised in singles, 6-0, 6-1 and Eliazo followed with a 7-5, 6-0 win to round out the scoring for the day in an 8-1 over the fourth place team in the conference.
The Pios return to the court tomorrow to face defending conference champion and co-leader of the conferece, Whitman College at 10am.
