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WEXFORD, Pa. - The Slippery Rock University women's tennis team opened the spring portion of its 2021-22 season in fine fashion Friday night by beating Division III power Carnegie Mellon University, 4-3, at the Oxford Athletic Club in Wexford, Pennsylvania.
 
The win improves The Rock's record to 1-0 while CMU drops to 1-1 on the season. Making Friday's win even more impressive for SRU is the fact that it was the first victory in school history over CMU, a perennial top-10 program and annually one of the top teams in western Pennsylvania.
 
Slippery Rock earned the victory thanks to stellar play that saw SRU sweep the back half of the singles flights to go with a victory from its top competitor as well.
 
Carnegie Mellon began the match by grabbing the doubles point from The Rock with wins from the first and third flights.
 
The first victory of the night occurred when Simran Bedi and Ava Givone defeated Gabriela del Val del Toro and Nuria Martin Lopez from the third flight, 6-1. CMU went on to clinch the doubles point when Lindy Cornwall and Bin Zheng narrowly edged The Rock's top doubles pairing of Lois Page and Adriana Gonzalez Sanchez, 7-6 (7-0).
 
While it had no bearing on the team score, SRU's No. 2 doubles team of Zoe Heed and Teddi Isherwood earned their first win as a team courtesy of a 7-6 (7-3) victory over Megan Qiang and Farida Abdelmoneum.
 
SRU opened the singles portion of Friday's match on a high note by pulling even with the Tartan's as Page bested Cornwall in the top flight 6-2, 6-1. Martin Lopez then gave SRU a 2-1 lead courtesy of a 6-3, 6-2 win over Abdelmoneum in the fourth flight.
 
From there on, SRU and CMU traded points over the next three matches as Zheng tied the contest for Carnegie Mellon by way of a 6-2, 6-1 victory over del Val del Toro in the third flight only for Heed to answer back for The Rock after rallying back from a 2-6 loss to Qiang in the first set of the sixth flight contest with a 6-2 win in the second and a 10-5 victory in the tiebreaker.
 
Carnegie Mellon once again answered The Rock's latest point with one of its own when Givone defeated Gonzalez Sanchez, 6-4, 6-1 in the second slot to re-tie the match at 3-3 with one match yet to finish.

However, Isherwood, who is only a freshman, staved off CMU's comeback bid for The Rock as she closed out the team victory in dramatic fashion from the fifth flight by downing Angell 6-2, 2-6, 10-7.
 
Isherwood has now won six of her first eight collegiate singles bouts while Page improved her record to 8-3 in 2021-22. Page's singles victory was the 99th of her Slippery Rock career. With her next win she will become the 13th athlete in program history to reach 100 victories.
 
Heed, a transfer from Coker University, made a great first impression for SRU as she accounted for two wins in her first match as a member of the program.
 
Slippery Rock plays the first of its three scheduled matches against Division I competition this year when it travels to Cleveland State University 3 p.m. Feb. 12.
 
 
 



 
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