Penguins Head to Michigan for Wide-Open Horizon League Championships
4/23/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
The Youngstown State women's tennis team opens play at the Horizon League Championships on Friday morning. The Penguins, who advanced to the championship match in 2013, are the No. 3 seed this year and open play against Wright State.
Despite being the third seed, the Guins are playing some of their best tennis of the year entering the event. After dropping a 4-3 decision to co-champion, and No. 2 seed, Milwaukee, YSU has won 20 of a possible 21 points in its final three matches. Highlighting the run is the program's first-ever win over UIC (6-1) which came last Saturday in Chicago.
Cleveland State, a team YSU defeated 6-1 in the regular season, is the No. 1 seed. Milwaukee gets a bye to the semifinals along with the Vikings. YSU will play six-seed Wright State in one quarterfinal match while UIC and Detroit will play in the other quarterfinal tilt.
The Flames enter the tournament as the 17-time defending champion. The last team to win a league title was Green Bay in 1996. That is the lone tournament UIC has not won since the league began holding a postseason event.
This year's event heads to Ann Arbor, Mich., and will be played at the University of Michigan's Varsity Tennis Center. The previous 16 championships were held in Indianapolis. This is the first one outside of Indiana since Dayton, Ohio, was the host site in 1996.
YSU has reached the finals twice, most recently last year. The Guins came up just short against UIC a year ago, falling to the Flames, 4-3.
The Penguins had a strong 37-11 record in singles play during the conference campaign. Both Marta Burak and Dominika Lackova posted 8-0 marks with Burak winning all her matches at No. 2 and Lackova posting seven wins at the No. 3 spot. In fact, both enter the HL Championships having won their last 10 singles matches.
Senior Margarita Sadovnikova went 7-1 at the No. 1 singles spot while Annina Brendel went 6-2 against league foes and Nehel Sahni was 5-2 in her first conference season.
As a team, YSU's two losses were by 4-3 decisions falling to the Panthers and Titans. In five of the eight matches, the Guins scored at least six points with their lone 4-3 win coming at Oakland.
The winner of the YSU-Wright State match will take on Milwaukee in the semifinals on Saturday at 11 a.m.
