Sept. 26, 2010
Columbia, Mo. -
Missouri Tennis finished competition at the season-opening Northern Iowa Invitational on Sunday and Head Coach Blake Starkey's squad got the season off to an excellent start.
Returning four starters from last year's club, the Tigers faced a strong 12-team field in Waterloo, Iowa, which included Big 12 rival Iowa State as well as Big Ten powers Iowa and Minnesota. And much like last season, the play of Kaitlyn Ritchie and Mallory Weber paced MU throughout the opening weekend. In addition to reaching the semifinals of the Platinum Flight Singles, the tandem paired to advance to the Platinum Doubles finals as well.
Ritchie won a pair of matches en route to the semifinals, including a thrilling come-from-behind win over Iowa's Lynn Poggensee-Wei 2-6, 6-4, 6-4. Weber also earned an impressive win over Northern Iowa's Laia Gonzalez, 6-7, 7-6, 6-3 in the quarterfinals, but fell to #37 Sonja Molnar 6-2, 6-1 in the semifinals.
Weber and Ritchie nearly pulled a huge upset in the Platinum Flight Doubles, taking the duo of Molnar and Poggensee-Wei, the nation's 35th ranked doubles tandem, to the brink before falling 9-8 (4).
"I just thought it was a real solid start to the year," Head Coach Blake Starkey said. "I'm not really surprised. It's early and it's just one tournament, but I just really like the depth of this team. We have had great competition in practice and we were ready to compete. We definitely had some good things come out of this weekend."
Junior Jamie Mera suffered an opening-round defeat on Friday in the Gold Flight, but rallied to claim the Gold Consolation title. The Florida native won three consecutive matches to earn the win, culminating with a 7-5, 6-1 winner over South Dakota's Alena Sergeychik.
Sophomore Maria Christensen continued Mizzou's dominance, winning the Silver Flight crown and pushing her season mark to 4-0. Christensen took down Minnesota's Peta Forsyth 6-4, 7-5 to win her first title as a Tiger.
A final win for Mizzou came in the Bronze Flight with newcomer Annemijn Koenen rolling to the title. Koenen went 4-0 in the bracket over the weekend and dominated Iowa's Cassandra Escobar 6-1, 6-1 capping an excellent Mizzou debut for the Arkansas transfer.
Missouri returns to action Oct. 8-11 at the Central Florida Invitational in Orlando.
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