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Let's Go Dancing!
BYU women's tennis team will get one last chance to play in front of their home town crowd.
May 10, 2005 With the winning bid to host the regional, the newly crowned Mountain West Conference Champs and No. 21 ranked BYU women's tennis team will get one last chance to play in front of their home town crowd. The Cougars, who got an automatic bid for winning the Mountain West Conference Championship last weekend, will host No. 36 Sacramento State, Niagara and No. 15 Baylor this Friday and Saturday. in the Region, coach Craig Manning also garnered Coach of the Year accolades. BYU will open the regional against Sacramento State Friday, May 13 at 10 a.m. with the winner advancing to play in the regional final against the winner between Baylor and Niagara who play at the same time. The winners of both Friday matches battle on Saturday, May 14 at 10 a.m. The winner of the regional then advances to the tournament's round of 16, played in Athens, Georgia on the campus of the University of Georgia. The women's Championships are 64-team fields, single elimination tournaments. There are 16 first and second round sites, called regionals, in each tournament. At each regional, four teams compete with the winner advancing to the sweet 16. Champs! In the second round, the Cougars got up early on SDSU with a the doubles point but the home court advantage SDSU had seemed to fuel them in singles. BYU went up early with an easy Sourkova 6-1,6-0 win. That gave BYU a 2-0 lead. Olga Boulytcheva had an uncharacteristically bad day, getting beat for only the fourth time this year 6-4,6-1. Then SDSU tied it up behind a win on four singles 5-7,2-6. Things were starting to get a little hairy. Dolly Chang won her first set 6-1, but SDSU made a surge in the second set and tied the match at 6 all. In thrilling fashion, Chang won the second set on a tiebreaker 7-4. That gave BYU a 3-2 overall score and 1 win away from the championship. Sophomore Sofia Holden stepped up to make sure they got there. She lost her first set 4-6, but came back mad as bee. She cruised in the second set 6-1 and simply blanked her opponent 6-0 for the win. The Championship turned out to be a dogfight. BYU pulled ahead early with their crucial wins on the doubles court. The doubles was up for grabs until BYU's Lauren Jones and Dolly Chang snagged the first win 8-5 on the two doubles court. Then Anastasia Soukrova and Jennifer Miccoli snuck in a 9-8 win after giving up a huge lead. That gave BYU a 1-0 lead going into singles. Then the gloves came off. BYU and UNLV duked it out on every court. Because of a injured shoulder, freshman Jennifer Miccoli was pulled from her usual spot at five singles and replaced with Dolly Chang who normally plays at six. Senior Rebecca Pike was then penciled in to play in her final Conference match---and she delivered. UNLV tied the lead at 1 all with a win on the five singles court. That gave the Rebels some momentum and shortly pulled ahead with a win at one singles. But Coach Manning's girls are fighters and scrapped their way back into the lead with huge wins from lone senior Rebecca Pike 6-2,2-6,6-3 and sophomore Sofia Holden 7-6,6-2. That gave the Cougars a 3-2 lead with Anastasia Sourkova and Olga Boulytcheva in their third sets. Boulytcheva won her first set but dropped her second while Sourkova gave up a tough first set only to bounce back to win the second. Both girls were up 5-3 in their third sets only to lose the leads to the pesky UNLV Rebels. Boulytcheva managed to get the upper hand with the set score at 5-4. With the championship match within grasps and the crowd on their toes, she won the final game to give BYU the win. Captain of the Ship Perfection
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