Courtesy of LA Tech Athletic Communications
A historic season ended for Louisiana Tech on Saturday as the Bulldogs fell to FIU, 4-1, in the Conference USA Women’s Tennis Championship match at the Liberty Tennis Complex.
Tech advanced to the program’s first ever title match by defeating WKU (4-0) and Middle Tennessee (4-1) in its opening two matches.
Playing in the program’s first ever tournament final, the moment did not seem too big for a young LA Tech (19-9) team in the early stages as the ‘Dogs came out firing by winning the doubles point. However, nerves seemed to play a role in singles as the two-time defending champ and 55th-ranked FIU (15-4) used its experience to pull out four points in singles to take its third straight title.
“I am proud of all the hard work,” said head coach Amy Sargeant. “They have worked so hard this year. There were times when they wanted to press quit and I would not let them. When you fight and you really believe in your ability, you can achieve some unbelievable things. I am proud of them trusting me and trusting the process. We are going to have a bigger and better team next year. We are only going to keep improving.”
The Panthers, who came into the match having lost the doubles point only six times all season, quickly claimed a 6-1 win on court two thanks to the pairing of Valery Gynina and Ekaterina Khairutdinova.
However, the LA Tech duo of Mio Kozaki and Nina Skoric (aka Team Minio) got out to a 3-0 lead just like they had the previous two doubles matches in the tourney. Up 4-2, the tandem was down 15-40 before winning three straight points to hold serve and take a commanding 5-2 lead.
FIU fought off one match point to get it to 5-3 and got up Love-30 in the following game, but the ‘Dogs won four straight points to secure the 6-3 victory over Aleksandra Simeva and Dana Baidaulet on court three.
To win the opening point, the Bulldog tandem of Ana Rodrigues and Zoie Epps would need to take down the Panther pairing of Oyinlomo Quadre and Katerina Mandelikova, who started out the 2024-25 season ranked as the 6th-best doubles team in the entire country and was unbeaten this spring.
Down 3-4, Rodrigues would hit a backhand winner crosscourt at deuce to hold serve and knot the match up at 4-all. The Bulldogs then broke the serve of the Panthers to give themselves an opportunity to serve it out themselves. FIU got up 30-40 with two chances to break, but a volley winner by Rodrigues got the game to deuce. After fighting off a missile of a return at the net, Rodrigues would ultimately flick a backhand winner to win the match, 6-4.
As strong as FIU is in doubles, they are even stronger in singles and showed it. The Panthers put constant pressure on the Bulldogs, ultimately going up a set on five of the six singles courts. The lone set that did go the way of LA Tech came from court five where Skoric captured it, 6-4, from Petja Drame.
One by one, the Panthers gained points to swing the momentum into their favor. FIU would take the lead at 2-1 following straight set victories on courts two and three.
For LA Tech to have a chance, it needed to force some third sets which they were ultimately unable to do. While Skoric was in a dogfight to give the Bulldogs their second point, Kozaki was figuring it out on court four versus Mandelikova, battling back from 1-4 down in the second to win three straight games. However, in the span of about a minute, FIU secured the win by getting back-to-back wins on courts six and one.
