Oct. 6, 2007
FLUSHING MEADOWS, N.Y. - The Penn State women's tennis team finished their first day of competition at the USTA Billie Jean King Tennis Center today with eight singles wins and three doubles wins. Competition will continue tomorrow at the site of the U.S. Open Grand Slam.
Leading the way in singles for the Nittany Lions were junior Dorothy Dohanics (Pittsburgh, Pa.) and sophomore Lauren McCarthy (Danbury, Conn.). Dohanics defeated Syracuse's Ashley Spicer (6-3, 6-3) and Army's Paige Flach (6-2, 6-0). McCarthy defeated Bianca Selan (6-1, 6-3) and Maggie Suydam of Dartmouth (6-0, 6-1).
In other singles matches, senior Jenny Shular (Peachtree City, Ga.) lost her first match to Yale's Janet Kin (6-3, 6-1), but came back with a win against Syracuse's Christina Tan (6-3, 6-1). Freshman Denisa Zobeideh (Weston, Fla.) was defeated in her first match by Beth Wingham of Dartmouth (6-3, 7-5), but went on to defeat Washington State's Aleksandra Cekic (6-3, 6-2). Junior Lauren Holzberg (Easton, Conn.) dropped her first match to Cornell's Ruxandra Dumitrescu (6-2, 1-6, 10-7). She went on to earn a win in a 6-0, 6-1 decision against Christine Tran of Rutgers. Walk-on Julie Raezer dropped a 6-4, 6-4 decision to Army's Jessica Shurtz. Raezer finished the day with a win against Boston University's Daria Zakharchenko (6-3, 6-3). Junior Leyla Morzan (Vancouver, British Columbia) was defeated by Princeton's Ivana King (7-5, 6-1), as well as Brown's Marisa Schonfeld (6-3, 2-6, 10-8). Sophomore Sarah Lotto (Toronto, Ontario) dropped her first match to Princeton's Sarah Huah (6-2, 6-2). Lotto was also defeated by Neils Barringer of NC State (7-6, 6-1).
Shular and McCarthy led the way in doubles for the Nittany Lions. After a tough 8-5 loss to Texas A&M's Anna Blagodarova and Tiffany Clifford, the team rebounded with a 8-6 win against the eight-seeded Boston College duo of Lauren Cash and Katherine Sullivan.
Lotto and Morzan lost a 9-7 heart-breaker to Danielle Abraham and Cori Lefkowith of Boston University. Lotto and Morzan went on to lose their second match, 8-6, to Katherine Atwell and Dasha Cherkasov of Boston College. Holzberg and Raezer won their first match, 8-3, against BC's Jacqueline Mabatah and Gia Nafarette. They were then defeated by BU's Elizabeth Corrao and Yana Sadovskaya. The finals doubles team of Dohanics and Zobeideh defeated Brown's Brett Finkelstein and Tanja Vucetic, 8-3, and lost their second match to Columbia's Carling Donovan and Natalia Makarova.