Principia Panthers Claim 2016 Women's Tennis Title
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Principia College added to their conference record, winning the 2016 St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC) Women's Tennis tournament; their 19th in program history. The tournament title is the Panthers third in the last four years and is the most for any program in any conference sport.
After falling to Webster University 5-4 in the regular season Principia faced the Gorloks in the SLIAC Championship match for the second consecutive year. The Panthers grabbed control of the match early on by sweeping all three doubles matches. The #3 team of Justine Roy and Lena Carlson cruised to an 8-3 win while the #1 team of Paige Cooley and Caitlin Carney pulled away mid-match for an 8-5 win.
The pivotal match was at #2 doubles where teammates Hanne Andersen and Anh Vu come from behind to lead the Panthers to a doubles sweep. The duo fell behind at the start of the match, trailing 5-2 at the start with Webster's Sara Rice knocking down shots at the net. However the Panthers kept calm and tied the match up at 7-7 with the match eventually going to a tiebreaker after teams remained even at 8-8. From there it was all Principia as they tallied the first five tiebreak points en route to a 7-4 tiebreak win.
Taking a 3-0 lead into the first to five match the Panthers needed little time in securing the final two remaining points. Paige Cooley rolled to a 6-0, 6-0 win at #1 singles, finishing out the year undefeated in conference play.
The decisive match once again featured Principia's Andersen, this time at #2 singles. Andersen took the first set 6-0 but was down 2-1 at the start of the second set before storming back and winning the next five games. On the winning point Andersen showed off her full array of shots beginning with a deep forehand for the first point. She followed with a drop shot to take a 30-0 lead and followed with a slam to get to match point. Andersen ended the match with a cross court forehand, closing out the match with a 6-2 win.
