Photo by Mabel Cruz<\/a><\/p>\nThe women\u2019s Intercollegiate Tennis Association Texas Regional Championships wrapped up Tuesday, with UTA\u2019s subpar performance cutting its time short at the Bayard H. Friedman Tennis Center. <\/p>\n
UTA played in its first regional championships since 2016, looking to make some noise. Though they battled, freshmen Tasnime Ahamout, Diana Kaibara, Natalia Gonzalez and Flora Farkaslaki were eliminated in the qualifying pool in the women\u2019s open singles. <\/p>\n
Sophomore Vanja Cado and graduate student Elizaveta Mladentseva also fell short in the qualifying round, ending UTA\u2019s women\u2019s open singles chances. Freshman Sofia Selle was the lone Maverick to play in the main pool after earning a bid, but was defeated by Sam Houston State University senior Nayuma Subba on Saturday. <\/p>\n
The Mavericks also participated in the women\u2019s open doubles. Kaibara and Selle partnered up in a close bout, losing in straight sets 8-7 and 8-6 to the University of Houston before getting knocked out by an 8-4 loss to Tarleton State University in the consolation round. Ahamout and Farkaslaki fought tooth and nail against Tarleton State, losing the first set 8-7 and the second set 7-1. <\/p>\n
Head coach Diego Benitez said this year has been different compared to previous years, having such a young team. He said it’s a lot of new teachings while getting them to relax enough to enjoy the game. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a really old team last year, and they all graduated. This is a cycle that happens every four years, so it\u2019s been a lot of fun,\u201d Benitez said. \u201cIt really makes the job a lot more interesting when you have to make sure that you\u2019re trying to implement the system with the new players and make them believe that how we do the things over here are the right way.\u201d <\/p>\n
Texas A&M University senior Mia Kupres, who was the No. 1 seed, dominated throughout the tournament and went on to win in the women\u2019s open singles final against Rice University senior Darya Schwartzman in straight sets 6-4, 6-4. <\/p>\n
Despite the shortcomings in the regionals, UTA will have opportunities in two more fall tournaments, as the team looks ahead to the Western Athletic Conference fall tennis invitational starting Thursday in St. George, Utah. <\/p>\n
@tdreevess<\/p>\n
sports-editor.shorthorn@uta.edu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Freshman Tasnime Ahamout prepares to hit the ball during a singles match against UT San Antonio on Oct.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151,6153],"class_list":["post-5996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996","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=5996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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