Results
 
ERIE, Pa. – The Slippery Rock University women's tennis team earned a 5-2 Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Western Division victory against Mercyhurst University Wednesday at the Westwood Racquet Club in Erie, Pennsylvania.
 
In addition to pushing their winning streak to a season-long five matches, Wednesday's victory also improved The Rock's record to 11-6 overall and 4-1 inside the PSAC West. Mercyhurst's record drops to 8-8 overall and 3-2 in conference competition following the loss.
 
Making Wednesday's result even more important was the fact that Slippery Rock was ranked third, and Mercyhurst eighth, in the second set of Atlantic Region rankings released by the DII NCAA Women's Tennis Committee.
 
The NCAA regional rankings determine the participants for the NCAA Tournament. The Atlantic Region consists of the PSAC, the Mountain East Conference (MEC), the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) and select independent institutions within the region's borders.
 
All three conference tournament champions receive an automatic berth into the NCAA Tournament with the next four highest ranked teams in the final regional rankings receiving at-large bids.
 
The Rock's dominant doubles teams were on full display against the Lakers as SRU swept all three flights to claim the first point of the match.
 
Nuria Martin Lopez and Gabriela del Val del Toro opened the day by downing Sara Bertolez Puente and Nadja Ostojic, 6-1, out of the second flight followed by Tina Slovak and Dari Sakhanova securing the doubles point by way of their 6-2 third flight win against Janice Theodora and Kiersten Brown.
 
While it had no direct bearing on the team score, Slippery Rock's top doubles team of Adriana Gonzalez Sanchez and Teddi Isherwood maintained SRU's momentum heading into singles play courtesy of a 6-2 win versus Kayla Dean and Roisin Murphy.
 
Slippery Rock went on to finish out the impressive victory by claiming the first four singles decisions.
 
del Val del Toro continued her ascent towards 100 career victories thanks to a 6-4, 6-0 triumph against Murphy. With three team contests remaining in the regular season, del Val del Toro now needs just four more victories to become the 14th athlete in program history to win 100 matches (singles + doubles).
 
Sakhanova proceeded to beat Ostojic 6-2, 6-0 in third flight competition and in the process become the fifth SRU athlete to win 10 singles matches this season. Martin Lopez would then pick up the match-deciding point via a 6-1, 6-0 win against Bertolez Puente for what was her seventh consecutive fourth flight victory.  
 
Competing out of the fifth flight, Slovak registered a win of her own against Brown to cap off SRU's big day.
 
Mercyhurst did manage to avoid the shutout with a pair of three-set wins from the sixth and first flights, respectively, as Theodora edged Georgie Lancaster and Dean hung on for a narrow win against Gonzalez Sanchez.
 
Slippery Rock will hit the road for a pair of non-conference matches this weekend 12 p.m. Saturday at Goldey-Beacom College and 12 p.m. against Jefferson University.




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