After an early loss to Loyola Marymount, the Long Beach State women’s tennis team has now won three straight contests after its 6-1 victory over the University of San Francisco Sunday.
The women got off to a great start when they won two doubles matches to take the first point of the day.
“When you can put up the doubles results like we did to start the match,” LBSU coach Jenny Hilt-Costello said. “It gives everyone a boost of confidence to see those first sets and look fairly dominant on most of the courts. It gives everyone a shot of adrenaline.”
The early win gave the 49ers (3-1) a boost of confidence as they continued to get better on the court throughout the day.
“I think the most important thing out of this entire weekend was — we’ve been working on a lot of things in practice [that] we wanted to learn from our LMU loss and some other things and we’re seeing the improvement that we’ve been working out on the court,” Hilt-Costello said. “That’s our goal every day is to see improvement every match, every day.”
Along with seeing improvements on the court since its early season loss, LBSU has seen the emergence of its freshman who are expected to take the place of the four seniors on the team.
“We recruited them knowing that they could come in here and contribute right away,” Hilt-Costello said. “They’re settling in very quickly and they definitely showed that they could be leaders for us next year.”
One of those freshman that has made an immediate impact was freshman Maren Helgo. Helgo cruised to a win, beating USF’s (0-4) Emily Maxfield 6-0 and 6-1.
“Every match is important,” Helgo said. “But it’s nice to be able to help the team.”
While Helgo dominated to her straight set victory, LBSU’s No. 1 Maeva Razakasoa and No. 2 Julie Gerard had a tougher tasks in their eventual straight set wins.
In Razakasoa’s 6-4 first set win, she had to come from behind before pulling ahead to take the first set. After settling into the match, Razakasoa beat USF’s freshman Anna Sokiran 6-1.
“She was playing good, but she had a game like [I haven’t seen],” Razakasoa said about the first set. “It was hard for me to find a rhythm, so I had to find it and I tried to move her [around the court].”
LBSU will now go on a four-match road trip starting Friday when the team faces San Diego State at 2 p.m.