ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. - After a day of rest, the University of Northwestern Women's Tennis team was ready for another long match in the afternoon Florida heat. The Eagles faced Indiana's Anderson University on Thursday. Northwestern endured a long, grueling match which ultimately ended in its favor, winning 5-4.
Starting off the day,
Abby Johnson (Zimmerman, Minn./Homeschool) and
Annie Orvis (Rochester, Minn/Schaeffer Academy) were eager and ready to take the court after a thrilling victory at one doubles on Tuesday night. The first half of the match was in their favor as they were up a break, leading 4-3. However, at this point, the Ravens were able to start their run. Johnson and Orvis went down 4-7, but found a small spark bouncing them back to 6-7. Ultimately though, the Eagles were narrowly edged out by the Ravens, 6-8.
Analise Marquardt (Parkers Prairie, Minn./Parkers Prairie) and
Elise Jarchow (Luverne, Minn./Luverne) were explosive out of the gate at the two doubles position. They played a clean and crisp match, leading to an 8-2 victory. Recognizing it was close battle,
Rayna Baumgarn (Holmen, Wis./Holmen) and
Abigail Ross (Chico, Calif./Central) were hoping to put their team ahead 2-1 at the end of doubles. However, they were unable to succeed after a tight face-off which ended with the Eagles falling, 5-8.
Being down 1-2 did not set the Eagles up with an easy road to a win. They knew after seeing their opponents play in doubles that this would be a tight race through singles play. This tight battle, though, did not deter Marquardt. She quickly brought the overall team score to a tie with a 6-0, 6-1 win at four singles. Continuing the winning theme, Johnson at two singles also brought more hope to UNW's chances of winning. Johnson cruised through the first set, then persevered through the second as her opponent took a greater run at her, forcing a second set tiebreaker. Johnson, however, was ready to write her own story and won the breaker, finishing the match 6-1, 7-6 (7-1). At five singles, Ross worked hard to overcome her opponent, but eventually fell 4-6, 1-6.
Grinding through the overbearing heat, Orvis was able to fight back in the second half of her match. After losing the first set, she quickly bounced back to gain control of the match and secure the second set. This led to a gruesome third set tiebreaker. Orvis was able to go up 8-3, but her opponent was not ready to quit. After saving a match point at 8-9, Orvis was able to pull out the win with a score of 13-11. Next was Jarchow battling into a third set tie breaker of her own. Jarchow and her opponent evenly split the first two sets 4-6, 6-4, but she was not able to overcome her opponent and fell 5-10 in the breaker. As the team score was sitting at 4-4, all eyes turned towards the six singles matchup, where
Rayna Baumgarn (Holmen, Wis./Holmen) was looking to clinch the match for the Eagles. In both sets, Baumgarn was down 1-4, yet she did not let this beat her. Baumgarn was able to dig deep and find the energy to keep pushing her opponent to the limit. Ultimately, she was able to clinch the match for Northwestern with a 7-5, 7-5 victory.
The Eagles are looking ahead to their last match of their spring break trip Friday at 12:00 PM ET (11:00 AM CT) versus Susquehanna University.
