Sept. 27, 2009

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HOUSTON - Freshman Emma Helistén and sophomore Sharon Siegel each posted singles wins as the Tulane University women's tennis team wrapped up play in the Rice Classic Sunday at the Jake Hess Tennis Stadium.

Helistén and Siegel's wins, however, were the only two victories for the Green Wave in eight tries for the day. For the weekend, Tulane went 12-14 in singles action and 6-9 in doubles play. Two players - sophomore Mariam Kurdadze and Jessica Lange - advanced to the championship match in the singles flights, and the combination of sophomores Marcela Fonseca and Caroline Gerber won the Flight 4 Doubles title.

"Today was a little bit of a disappointing day for us," . We had eight singles matches and only bringing home two victories out of the eight obviously makes it our worst day of the fall so far. When you think that we've played back-to-back weekends all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I think a little bit of fatigue set in on this last day."

Helistén posted a 6-2, 6-4 win over Nyssa Peele of Texas State in Flight 3, while Siegel downed the Bobcats' Jennifer Nowland in Flight 8, 6-2, 6-3. Tulane had a chance to pick up at least two more singles wins on Sunday, but faltered down the stretch.

Freshman Emma Levy won her opening set against SMU's Shazoda Hatamova in Flight 3, 6-3, and was on top 3-0 in set No. 2. Hatamova, however, rallied to take the second set 6-4 and earned the win with a 10-3 tie-breaker. In the Flight 8 championship match, meanwhile, Lange dropped her opening set to Texas' Julia Wiegand, won the second set 6-1 and led 5-0 in the third. Wiegand, meanwhile, rallied to outscore the Green Wave sophomore 7-1 the rest of the way to come away with the victory.

In other singles action, sophomore Mariam Kurdadze lost the Flight 1 championship match to Rice's Rebekka Hanle, 7-5, 6-3, sophomore Lindsay Dvorak dropped a Flight 4 back-draw contest to LSU's Keri Frankenberger, 6-1, 6-1, Gerber fell to SMU's Sophie Quist in Flight 5, 7-5, 6-2, and Fonseca lost to SMU's Claudia Hidalgo in Flight 6, 7-5, 7-5.

"When you look at who we were stacked up against, we did well," Sisk said. "But we didn't close it out. That is something we're working on. When you get that far in the game, you have to play to win. You can't let off the gas a little bit and hope they miss. We have to finish it off.

"We can't let these losses get under our skin a little bit. Overall, even with today because we played a lot of really talent teams, we did a really good job. I can't let today be the deciding factor for the entire weekend because it was a great weekend for Tulane."

After playing three-day tournaments in consecutive weekends, the Green Wave will enjoy a bit of a break before returning to action on Oct. 23-26, when they travel to Auburn, Ala., for the ITA Southern Regionals. From there, Tulane will close out the fall portion of its schedule at the Cougar Fall Draw from Nov. 6-8, in Houston, Texas.

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