Nicholls men’s tennis team earns first SLC win of the season in dominating fashion over Lamar

Playing matches at two different venues, the Nicholls men’s and women’s tennis teams faced different results Friday morning.

The Nicholls men, playing in Beaumont, won their first Southland Conference match of the year, defeating Lamar, 6-1.

Meanwhile, the Nicholls women fell in non-conference action 4-2 to St. Thomas at the Thibodaux Regional Tennis Complex. Playing again on Saturday, the Nicholls women lost at home to Fordham 4-0.

The win for the men improved Nicholls to 1-3 in Southland play at 7-6 overall. The two losses dropped the women’s team to 6-8.

The win for the men came at the end of three long trips through Texas.

“Over the last week to 10 days, we’ve gone 1700 miles,” Nicholls coach Greg Harkins said. “We grind out the hard miles in the old vans and just old schooling it with shoestring budgets and everything. Even though we lost those matches in San Antonio and Corpus Christi, they were fierce matches. There really wasn’t a whole lot of difference.”

“Tennis is so unique because it’s not a vacuum environment,” the Nicholls coach continued. “When you go play basketball, it’s the same court, indoors, air conditioned. The specifics are always the same. Every single match we play away from home, it’s a different configuration. The material is different. The elements are different, so to win in our conference on the road grinding out insane miles, it takes a herculean effort, and the boys were up to that challenge today, which was really cool.

The Nicholls men’s team earned the point from doubles play against Lamar by taking two of the three matches.

After the teams split the first two matches, the Nicholls duo of Antonio Sasso and Danail Banov, playing at No. 3, defeated the Cardinal duo of Joan Crespo and Hakuri Omori-Cowie, 6-4.

Lamar’s No. 1 doubles team of Max Amling and Leon Nikel defeated the Nicholls twosome of Omar Morsy and Quentin Lamothe, 6-1.

Nicholls evened things up with its No. 2 doubles team of Harry Collins and Kotaro Matsumura defeating Brandon Do and Martin Garcia-Ripoll, 6-2.

Morsy, playing Court 1, defeated Garcia-Ripoll, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4.

On Court 2, Collins continued his winning ways, defeating Amling, 3-6, 6-4, 6-4.

Also winning for Nicholls was Lamothe over Nikel (6-1, 6-3); Sasso over Omari-Crowie (6-4, 6-3); and Matsumura over Crespo (6-4, 5-7, 6-4).

Lamar’s only win came win Do’s 6-3 6-4 win over Banov.

The Colonels got out to a quick start, gaining the point from doubles play and clinched the match four games into singles play.

“What happened is we really showed some backbone in those last two matches (against UIW and Corpus Christi), even though we came up short. Today was the first day I’ve seen the boys across the board come together and everybody was competitive in every single line. The good news is we got ahead, and we stayed ahead. We actually clinched the match early on. There were still a couple lines left. We had clinched the match. Harry Collins clinched it in the fourth match on the court, so we already had won the match,” said Harkins.

St. Thomas 4, Nicholls 2 (women): Both wins for Nicholls came in singles play.

Lea Grinberg, playing on Court 3, defeated Caroline Lindahal of St. Thomas, 7-6, 6-2. Also winning for Nicholls on Court 5 was Constanza Cruz. Cruz defeated Regina Talavera, 6-2, 6-3.

In other singles action, St. Thomas’ Marthe Degeorges defeated Carla Bouygues (7-5, 6-2); Janna ElNemr beat Sophia Sara Safarova (2-6, 6-2, 6-0); and Yinong Ma beat Aada Inna (6-3, 7-5).

St. Thomas earned the point in doubles play with a pair of wins.

Ma and Olivia Paradise, the No. 1 doubles team for St. Thomas, defeated the Nicholls duo of Cruz and Bouygues, 6-0.

ElNemr and Lindahl topped the Nicholls twosome of Noemie Piquet and Dareen Hassan.

“We’ve got to get better in doubles. We talk a lot about positioning. We’re still working to get everybody together,” said Harkins.

Like the men, the women have logistical concerns with scheduling.

“The match schedule, in some regards, it’s almost even tougher for the women because there aren’t any breathers,” Harkins said. “The women, we’re playing  (Saturday at home against Fordham and Monday at Jackson State) then they go straight into a conference stretch again. We’ll have three conference matches next week and we’ll still play out-of-conference matches.

“What I’m hoping is that we can toughen up a little bit and get through the challenges logistically because we’ve got the depth and the girls want to do the right thing. They’ve just got to be willing to commit to putting themselves out there and standing tall in the box.”

Fordham 4, Nicholls 0 (women): Fordham made quick work of the Nicholls women’s tennis team, gaining the point from doubles play and winning the first three singles matches.

In doubles play, the Fordham No. 2 doubles team of Xiaowei Hu and Eleni Fasoula defeated the Nicholls duo Grinberg and Inna, 6-2. Fordham’s No. 3 team of Julianne Nguyen and Franny Shea beat Hassan and Piquet, 6-4, to capture doubles play.

In singles action, Fasoula defeated Grinberg on Court 3, 6-1, 6-2; on Court 6, Sofie Siem beat Piquet, 6-2, 6-2; on Court 5, Nguyen defeated Cruz, 7-5, 6-1, to secure the match.

All other matches went unfinished.