Cow­girl ten­nis con­cludes reg­u­lar sea­son with two wins

Symona Symkova returns a vol­ley dur­ing the first match of the day. (Jeremy Stegall/LFP)

The Wyoming Cow­girl ten­nis team fin­ished its reg­u­lar sea­son strong with a pair of Moun­tain West Con­fer­ence wins over Col­orado State and Air Force last week.

With the vic­to­ries, Wyoming (14−7, 5–3 MWC) clinched the No. 3 seed in the upcom­ing MWC tour­na­ment in Las Vegas.  The 14 total vic­to­ries include five con­fer­ence wins and a third-place con­fer­ence fin­ish, which are all Wyoming ten­nis records.  In addi­tion to these UW team records, Wyoming coach Kati Gyu­lai is coach­ing the UW ten­nis all-time-wins leader, senior Sarah Sum­mer­field, who has com­piled 67 career-singles wins.

The Cow­girls beat CSU in Gree­ley, Colo., 6–1, and got the best of Air Force, 5–2, in Col­orado Springs.  The match with the Rams was moved to Gree­ley because of inclement weather in Fort Collins.

Junior Kim van Ginkel went 2–0 in sin­gles matches against the Rams and Fal­cons, and for her efforts; she was named MWC Player of the Week for the first time in her career.  Van Ginkel beat Lau­ren Mul­h­ern of CSU, 6–0, 6–1, and knocked off Chris­tine Molina of Air Force, 6–2, 4–6, 6–3, to improve to 27–8 on the year in sin­gles play.

Against CSU, the Cow­girls won the dou­bles point, and along with van Ginkel, Sum­mer­field, Simona Synkova, Rebecca Berger and Sasa Nem­cova earned sin­gles wins.  The lone vic­tory for the Rams came from Tori Arne­son, as she defeated Alexan­dra Kovacs, 3–0 (ret.).

“We are very happy to come away with a vic­tory,” Gyu­lai said in a release.  “CSU is a very good team and this was a tough match.”

In Col­orado Springs, Wyoming picked up right where it left off and opened the match win­ning the dou­bles point over Air Force.  Sum­mer­field, Synkova and Berger each joined van Ginkel by win­ning their respec­tive sin­gles events.  Melissa Cecil got the Fal­cons on the board with a 6–1, 6–0 win against Nem­cova and Sarah Cass­men defeated Paloma Navarro of UW, 6–4, 7–5.

“We are very happy to end the reg­u­lar sea­son with a win over a good Air Force team,” Gyu­lai said.

The Cow­girls will travel to Las Vegas, Nev., for the MWC tour­na­ment to face sixth seeded TCU on Thurs­day at 3 p.m.