The Auburn Women's Tennis team opened its spring season this weekend with a pair of matches at home, defeating Kennesaw State Saturday and falling to No. 10 Georgia Tech Sunday.
Saturday, the Tigers swept the match 7-0 at the Yarbrough Tennis Center.
It was the first sweep for the team since March 31, 2009, against Mississippi State.
"First match of the season, we came out and had some nerves in doubles and made it closer than it needed to be," said head coach Tim Gray. "We still have some work ahead of us at this point in the season, but I'm proud of how our team came out and performed today."
After a clean sweep of the doubles matches, the Tigers kept the energy up and clenched the win early with three games left to play.
Senior Fani Chifchieva won both her doubles match and her single.
The No. 71 Bulgaria native said she was proud of the team for keeping its mind in the game.
"We didn't know much about the team so we're playing people we obviously don't know at all," Chifchieva said. "We were just trying to stay focused and play what we have been working on for the past two weeks."
Sunday's was a role reversal as Georgia Tech blanked the Tigers 7-0.
A pair of freshmen, Paulina Schippers and Plamena Kurteva, picked up Auburn's only win of the afternoon in No. 3 doubles.
The girls battled from behind to tie at 7-7. They went on to win the tiebreaker 7-5 and finish the match 8-7.
Gray said he thought the freshmen stepped up and had a good learning experience.
"They took some lumps today, did a great job yesterday," Gray said. "Overall I have to give them a passing grade and they're going to learn from it and hopefully we can make some adjustments and do even better in the future."
In No. 1 singles, Chifchieva faced a rematch of her Nov. 5 match against Irina Falconi at the ITA National Indoor Tournament.
Falconi, who is the top-ranked singles player in the country, defeated Chifchieva in November 6-0, 7-6. She also took Sunday's match 6-1, 6-1 in straight sets.
Senior Myrthe Molenveld of the Netherlands and sophomore Daniela Vukadinovic of Serbia dropped their doubles match 8-1.
In singles action, Molenveld drew 66th ranked Sasha Krupina.
Krupina took the first set 6-2, but Molenveld fought to tie the second set at 5-5. She eventually fell to Krupina 6-2, 7-5.
"My doubles match was not the best match I have ever played," Molenveld said. "It started off slow and nervous and I feel like I missed out on a lot of chances."
She also said she felt she had the opportunity to win her second set against Krupina, but didn't finish the job.
Gray said he felt the team gave Georgia Tech too much credit for being No. 10 in the country.
"We're a better team than we displayed today," Gray said. "It's early and we got to just keep working."
This week, the team travels to Los Angeles for the ITA Nationals.
The Tigers will face No. 29 LSU in the opening round then will move to either No. 9 University of Southern California or San Diego Sunday.
"If we kind of keep some perspective and some balance, then I think we have a great shot at it," Gray said. "We don't really have much of time, we leave Wednesday and play Friday so we gotta hit the ground running, but I like our chances."
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