April 18, 2018
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.-- The Penn State women's tennis team will finish out the regular season by hosting two Big Ten matches against No. 12 Northwestern and No. 15 Illinois. The team will take on Northwestern on Friday, Apr. 20 at 4:00 p.m. and Illinois on Sunday, Apr. 22 at 11:00 a.m.
Penn State (7-13, 2-7 B1G) is coming off of a tough weekend against then No. 50 Purdue and Indiana. These two matches will close out both the Big Ten and regular season for the team.
No. 12 Northwestern (17-4, 10-0 B1G) last defeated Minnesota, 6-1. Northwestern has three ranked doubles pairs, including No. 4 Erin Larner and Maddie Lipp, No. 31 Alex Chatt and Lee Or and No. 70 Lee Or and Erin Larner. The Wildcats also have two ranked singles players in No. 39 Erin Larner and No. 70 Maddie Lipp.
No. 15 Illinois (19-3, 8-2 B1G) will take on No. 31 Ohio State on Friday, Apr. 20 before taking on the Nittany Lions on Sunday. Illinois owns one ranked doubles pair in No. 48 Daniela Pedraza Novak and Sasha Belaya. The Fighting Illini have three ranked singles players in No. 97 Jaclyn Switkes, No. 107 Mia Rabinowitz and No. 110 Asuka Kawai.
"This weekend is a big weekend for our team and program," said head coach Chris Cagle. "Both Northwestern and Illinois are strong programs so the level of play will be high. Our team has been competing at a high level all year and all the matches have been close either way. Obviously, with us honoring our seniors on Sunday after the doubles matches will be a special part of the weekend. Our four seniors have contributed so much to the program in a variety of ways so it will be nice to honor them and I hope we have a great crowd out for the matches. This will be a great weekend overall at Penn State with all that is going on so I would encourage all the alumni that are back in town to come out and see a really high level of tennis this weekend!"
The match against Northwestern will be the One Team match where student sections from all the different sports are invited to come watch. The match against Illinois will be Senior Day, where the Nittany Lions will honor Bennett Dunn (Orlando, Fla.), Hannah Kratky (Greenwich, Conn.), Taylor Shukow (Boca Raton, Fla.) and Liyin Xu (Chengdu, China), following the doubles matches.
Links to live stats will be posted on Facebook and Twitter prior to both matches.
Keep up with the Penn State women's tennis team at GoPSUsports.com. For continued updates throughout the year, make sure to `like' our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pennstatewten and follow our twitter @pennstateWTEN.