Nicholls women’s tennis team drops Southland opener at home to McNeese

The Nicholls women’s tennis team may have lost its Southland Conference opener at home to McNeese State on Saturday afternoon 6-1, but there are things to look beyond just the numbers, according to coach Greg Harkins.

“This team is probably the second or the first best team in the conference,” Harkins said of McNeese. “Their No. 1 player (Arina Gamretkaia) was one of the top players in all of JUCO tennis last year. This team is a great team.”

Gamretkaia defeated Nicholls freshman Liu QianYu 6-1.

“I think the main thing for us to take from a day like today is to be encouraged, not discouraged. Our ladies played well. Our line 2 doubles was crackerjack good,” said Harkins.

The Nicholls line 2 doubles team of Constanza Cruz and Carla Bouygues defeated Emma-Lou Pommiers and Ariane Monlleo Sanchis 6-3.

The No. 1 line for McNeese, Gamretkaia and Anastasija Adikyte defeated Lea Grinberg and Aada Inna, while the No. 3 line of QianYu and Sophia Sara Safarova, fell to the McNeese duo of Tiana Fox and Aina Domingo-Bernabeu, both at 1-6, with the point from doubles play going to the Cowgirls.

In singles play, the lone winner for Nicholls was Noemie Piquet at line 6, defeating Monlleo Sanchis, 7-6, 1-6.

“Our line 6 singles beat a girl who won nine of her last 10 matches,” said Harkins. “We went to a third-set tiebreaker at line 3. We were close and competitive in the other lines, so this was a great preview of what we need to do, where the bar is or us to get ready for conference (tournament) six weeks.

“The girls competed well. We’re just gonna work on the fundamentals and get a little bit better.”

McNeese went into the match 12-1 on the season while Nicholls entered 6-1. The Lady Colonels lost out on playing three matches prior to taking on the Cowgirls. Two of the matches were postponed and the other was cancelled.

One of the postponed matches was against McNeese, but had it not been for inclement weather, Nicholls would have had an SLC match with Lamar prior to taking on the Cowgirls.

“I don’t like to make excuses,” said of the missed-out matches “They just didn’t make as many mistakes. They’ve got a few more matches under their belt. What we need to do is take what happened today and build on it. We got another tough out of conference match on Tuesday against (the University of Alabama-Birmingham), who’s an excellent team. We got a lot of tennis in today, and hopefully, we can build on that on Tuesday and then basically we’ll springboard it back in the conference again.”

Nicholls did not get the quick start it was hoping for when it did not win the point from doubles.

“That’s what good teams do. They got out front and they just kind of squeezed us,” said Harkins. “We were good for right at the two-hour mark, but after that, the level dropped off.

“We’re gonna work on the doubles a little bit. We were unbelievable at line 2, it was incredible, We’re fundamentally short at line 1 and 3 today. We need to go back and discuss tactics and strategy and tweak it a little bit. I may make some adjustments in the lineup, but those are all good opportunities for us. We can get better in those areas. That’s not something that we can’t overcome, and we will.”

In the other singles matches, Domingo-Bernabeu defeated Safarova, 6-2, 6-3; it was Adeikye over Bouygues, 6-3, 4-6, 10-8; Pommiers over Grinberg, 6-3, 6-3; and Fox over Inna, 6-2, 6-4.