By James Kim (@Jdkim38):
The San Jose State Spartans competed in the Battle in the Bay tennis tournament at the California Tennis Club in San Francisco over the weekend. The freshmen athletes Laura Malsert and Julie Vereecke competed in their first collegiate competition there, with sophomore Tamara Culibrk.
The tournament began with doubles rounds, in which Tamara Culibrk and Laura Vereecke lost 6-4 in straight sets to University of Southern California’s Angela Kulikov and Rebecca Weissman.
The singles entrants for the tournament were Laura Malsert and Culibrk. Culibrk won 6-4 in straight sets, defeating Santa Clara University’s Katya Tabachnik.
Malsert won her match in a set-point of a tie-breaker set after winning five consecutive points. She advanced in the tournament, defeating USF’s Hanna Borjeson.
Saturday’s rundown began with a win in a consolation round in doubles between the SJSU pair, Vereecke and Culibrk, and the University of the Pacific’s Roos Nederstigt and Maayan Sela.
“Since it was Laura and Julie’s first tournament, it was a good opportunity to see how they play and how they played under pressure,” Culibrk said.
Neither Culibrk nor Malsert advanced past their next opponents, the top and second seeded players in the tournament, Madison Westby and Rebecca Weissman, respectively.
“Overall, this weekend was really good… I couldn’t be more happy than the effort we had yesterday,” said SJSU head coach Chad Skorupka. “I think today, we made some unforced errors in the singles… we weren’t aggressive when we needed to be and we played two good, quality opponents.
The winners of the tournament were Kolikov/Weissman in doubles, and Weissman in singles.
The Spartans’ next tournament is the SDSU Fall Classic I in San Diego on Friday.