As next weekend's National Team Indoor Championships loom, the No.9 Virginia women's tennis team heads north to face Boston College Sunday. Following two dominant wins Tuesday against West Virginia and Virginia Tech, the team hopes to continue its perfect season.
"We played really well and took care of business," junior Erin Vierra said of Tuesday's matches. "We got one ACC win there, so we can just build confidence that we're going to be a contender in the conference."
The Cavaliers (4-0, 1-0 ACC) dominated across the board Tuesday, sweeping both the Mountaineers and Hokies, 7-0. Virginia did not surrender a single set in singles and recovered from some early struggles in doubles to take all six matches, coach Mark Guilbeau said.
"The team realizes that the doubles is in good shape, if we can sharpen up and speed up in really specific areas," Guilbeau said. "They did that both at the nets and in the backcourt.
In practice, you can see the work that they've done has brought them full circle. I'm very positive about where we're headed."
Virginia will need to maintain its doubles and singles successes next weekend when it hosts 15 of the top teams in the nation for the National Team Indoors. The Cavaliers will face a slate which includes five other ACC teams, but before they turn their attention to the tournament, the team will receive a stiff test from another conference foe in Boston College (2-1, 0-0 ACC).
The Eagles enter this weekend's match coming off a strong 6-1 win at UMass. Their only loss so far this season was a tightly contested 4-3 road defeat to Brown.
Boston College is led by No.108 freshman Jessica Wacnik, who is undefeated so far this season at first singles and is part of the No.32 doubles team along with senior Erina Kikuchi.
The Eagles first doubles team features the formidable No.11 duo of junior Alex Kelleher and junior Olga Khmylev.
The Cavaliers are trying to make sure they stay on top of their game, viewing this match as an important step in their season.
"All these matches are very tough in the ACC," Vierra said. "We need to make sure we're very tough [against BC], competing very hard in tough moments and just coming through as strong as possible."
A win this weekend would provide an important boost of morale for the team heading into next weekend's competition, and with its perfect record still intact, Virginia is looking to continue improving.
"[We want to see] that we're staying healthy, that we're doing fundamentals very well and mostly that we're competing well," Vierra said. "We just want to stay really focused, and to have as clean a match and as strong a match as we can going into nationals"
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