Syracuse Wins Back-to-Back Matches for Strong Weekend Showing
The Syracuse women’s tennis team won both of their matches over the weekend to go to 6-1 for the season. The weekend saw two upstate NY opponents fall to the Orange as Polina Kozyreva and Shiori Ito both continued their unbeaten streaks for the season. Both players won their sixth match of the season, making it the longest streak for Kozyreva in her career for Syracuse.
The weekend started out with a win over Buffalo. The new pairings of Kozyreva and Miyuka Kimoto along with Ito and Sofya Treshcheva won both of their doubles matches to take the doubles point in favor of Syracuse. The Orange carried that momentum into the singles matches, taking 4 out of 6 of them to nab the win.
Syracuse followed that up with another win in their last non-conference match of the season over the Niagara Purple Eagles. The Orange have dominated Niagara in their history as opponents, never losing a match against the Purple Eagles. Syracuse did forfeit two matches against their opponents as Ines Fonte and Treshcheva both dropped out due to injuries.
“We’re just gonna take it one weekend at a time and see who’s available and who’s not and take it from there,” Coach Younes Limam said regarding the injures following the match. Syracuse will need both of those players back for the upcoming stretch of difficult opponents they face.
Even with the forfeited matches, the rest of the team picked up where the doubles left off as Syracuse didn’t drop a single set in any of the singles matches to cap off the win in favor of the Orange. Viktoriya Kanapatskaya and Ito both did not drop a single game for the entire match. The win makes Syracuse 4-0 against other New York opponents with wins as well over Army and Cornell.
Syracuse starts conference play against ACC opponents next week with a visit to a different kind of eagle when they host Boston College in Syracuse on Saturday. The ACC is one of the strongest conferences in women’s tennis and will be a true test for what this Syracuse team is capable of.