University of Northern Iowa Athletics
University of Northern Iowa
Air Force
Air Force Edges UNI, 4-3
2/23/2014 1:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
LINCOLN, Neb. - The University of Northern Iowa women's tennis team dropped a tight 4-3 decision to the Air Force Academy on Sunday at the Nebraska Tennis Center.
UNI (5-6 overall) received singles wins from Jieke Stroobant (No. 1), Erica Medlin (No. 2) and Astrid Santos (No. 4). Santos also teamed up with Elvira Lopez to win at No. 2 doubles for the Panthers.
The doubles matches were extremely tight throughout the three matches. Air Force won a pair of tiebreakers at No. 1 and No. 3 doubles to clinch the doubles point. UNI's No. 1 doubles team of Jieke Stroobant and Erica Medlin rallied from a 5-2 deficit to force the tiebreaker at 7-7.
The singles matches were also close throughout. When Air Force (9-4 overall) won No. 6 and No. 3 singles it held a 3-0 lead. Then the Panthers rallied and got wins from Astrid Santos (No. 4), Erica Medlin (No. 2) and Jieke Stroobant (No. 1) to knot the match at 3-3.
The dual came down to a three-set thriller at No. 5 singles from UNI's Krissy Lankelma and Air Force's Tracy Landram. Landram won the first set, 6-1, then Lankelma answered back with a 6-1 win in set No. 2. Landram was able to hang on in the third set for the 6-3 victory to clinch the dual for the Falcons.
"To anybody who came out to watch I'm sure this match was a amazing one to watch," UNI head coach Daniel Finn said. "These two teams left it all out there. Give credit to Air Force because they deserved the win. It's just never easy to lose these matches when it could have easily went our way. We are improving by great strides each and every day. You just hope that an experience like this even as bad as it feels to lose will help you later on in the season. I am incredibly proud of the ladies and how hard they fought back against a strong and highly energetic team. To me that shows growth. We could have easily quit when we saw the 3-0 score but they refused to go away quietly and near pulled it out. We will be OK and continue to trust the process and improve."
Players Mentioned
