{"id":297796,"date":"2026-05-18T05:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/297796\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T05:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T05:34:08","slug":"texas-am-womens-tennis-wins-second-national-championship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/297796\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas A&M women’s tennis wins second national championship"},"content":{"rendered":"

ATHENS, Ga. \u2014\u00a0Daria Smetannikov won the No. 6 singles in three sets, lifting fourth-seeded Texas A&M<\/a> to a 4-1 win over second-seeded Auburn on Sunday for the Aggies’ second NCAA women’s tennis title.<\/p>\n

Smetannikov, a senior from New Jersey, defeated Ava Esposito 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 to clinch the title while the No. 1 and No. 2 singles were both in the third set.<\/p>\n

Lexington Reed won the No. 4 singles 7-6, 6-3 over Merna Refaat and Violeta Martinez took the No. 4 matchup 7-5, 6-1 over Ashton Bowers.<\/p>\n

The Aggies made three consecutive championship appearances, beginning when the Aggies won the program\u2019s only national title in 2024.<\/p>\n

Texas A&M won the doubles point and the contest was stopped shortly after the singles matches started because of lightning in the area.<\/p>\n

The Tigers defeated No. 3 Ohio State 4-1 in the semifinals Saturday to clinch their first national championship appearance. Auburn won the SEC regular season title and SEC Championship for the first time in program history. Texas A&M beat No. 2 Georgia 4-3 in the other semifinal.<\/p>\n

The Aggies beat Auburn 4-3 at home on April 12, but the Tigers beat Texas A&M 4-1 in the semifinals of the SEC Tournament.<\/p>\n

Angella Okutoyi defeated Ilinca Amariei 6-2, 6-2 in No. 3 singles for Auburn’s only point.<\/p>\n

Smetannikov and Reed won their No. 3 doubles match 6-1 over Ekaterina Khairutdinova and Bowers. The Aggies got the doubles point when Lucciana Perez and Mia Kupres edged Ava Esposito and DJ Bennett 7-6.<\/p>\n

Perez, who finished with a 28-0 record, was leading Bennett 4-3 in the third set on the No. 1 court when Smetannikov clinched the championship. Kupres and Khairutdinova were tied 1-1 in the third at No. 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATHENS, Ga. \u2014\u00a0Daria Smetannikov won the No. 6 singles in three sets, lifting fourth-seeded Texas A&M to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28,95969,88145],"class_list":["post-297796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-tp-texas-a-m-aggies","tag-tp-colleges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}