Although this past week the Lehigh tennis team canceled its spring break trip to Puerto Rico, that did not deter the women’s team from winning two straight matches back to back days.
The Mountain Hawks won 7-0 over Rider University on Sunday at the Lewis Tennis Center only a day after winning 5-2 to Saint Joseph’s University.
“They definitely continued their high level that they played yesterday,” Lehigh tennis coach Wouter Hendrix said. “Yesterday was a really, really big win because our season was kind of a struggle until last night, and I felt last night was definitely a turning point.”
Lehigh (5-4) only lost four games all of Lehigh’s matches Sunday, one of which was in a doubles match and the others in singles matches. Most of the players left singles with 6-0, 6-0 sets, while freshman Grace Lin won her sets 6-1, 6-0, and sophomore Kirstin Godau won 6-0, 6-2.
Lehigh won its doubles matches 6-0, 6-1, and 6-0, with junior captain Jamie Campisi playing alongside sophomore Christina Auyeung, Lin playing with junior Cassidy Cruz and sophomore Briana Maravich teaming up with Godau.
Lin said the team worked together well as a unit and has been trying to cheer each other on more. Hendrix said the team has been starting to apply what they’ve been practicing during their matches.
“We’re playing a little more aggressively in doubles and mixed up our doubles line-up a little bit and that seems to be working well,” Hendrix said.
The team canceled its team trip to Puerto Rico due to concerns with the emerging Zika virus. According to The Washington Post, the Zika virus is expected to infect one in five Puerto Ricans.
“There was so much bad news that was very recent with Zika because it was linked to a paralysing neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre,” Hendrix said. “That’s mostly why (we canceled the trip). I didn’t want anybody to catch that, especially with conference play coming up, it’s too much of a risk. The risks way outweighed the benefits of that trip in my opinion.”
The team was originally supposed to train and play games against Armstrong State University, University of North Carolina, Denison University and New Jersey Institute of Technology while on the island. Part of the team will be headed to Florida and will train there, while some will go home. Freshman Grace Lin, who is from California, said she will be staying at Lehigh to train with Hendrix.
“It’s unfortunate because it’s really nice team bonding time, and we were going to get in some good matches down there against some good opponents,” Campisi said. “But at the end of the day it’s what the coaches and the administration felt was in the best interest of the players and our season going forward.”
Hendrix said he doesn’t believe this separation will not set the team back when they come back and start conference play.
“We’ve played so much already, I think this will actually help us take some time off and do some training and work on some stuff,” he said.
The team’s next match will be on March 20 at Lewis Tennis Center against Loyola University (Maryland).
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