In its lone home outing of the semester, Virginia women’s tennis hosted the Wahoowa Invitational Friday through Sunday, winning all its doubles and most of its singles matches against opponents from West Virginia, Old Dominion and James Madison.
Fall tennis is often less about results than it is development. The NCAA individual championships were recently moved to the fall, which does add some stakes to the semester for top players. By and large, however, the goal of events such as this invitational is just to get court time and build some familiarity with match play before a packed spring schedule.
In terms of the visiting competition, the dominance ultimately showcased by Virginia’s lineup was not entirely unexpected. None of the visiting teams are very highly ranked — no ranked players or pairings either — while the Cavaliers are among the top teams in the nation, fielding two ranked singles players and two ranked doubles teams.
Still, in front of a home crowd, a number of the matches ended up becoming pretty competitive. That is a good thing in the context of the fall — Coach Sara O’Leary is conscious of the tough slate coming in the spring, so facing some adversity while still coming out with the win is a good use of an early-October weekend.
“We have a tough schedule next spring,” O’Leary said in a prior interview with The Cavalier Daily. “We're traveling a lot, we're playing a lot of really good teams, so fitness is going to be key. And just getting that experience, that match experience, not so much result based, but just being in those tight moments and feeling that and playing match after match.”
Junior Isabelle Lacy was probably the most dominant in her respective matchups, going 2-0 in singles and 3-0 in doubles with her partner, senior Meggie Navarro. Neither of her singles wins were even that competitive, as she smothered her opponents with her composed and powerful baseline game. Only in her second semester with the team, Lacy is having a very strong fall, having made it to the pre-qualifying finals in the recent ITA All-American Championship.
Equally impressive though less dominant was junior Vivian Yang, who went 2-0 in singles — in both cases against one of the opposing team’s best players — and 1-0 in doubles. She won both her singles matches in straight sets, putting on defensive clinics against two dangerous players with arsenals of powerful shots.
Freshmen Kaitlyn Rolls and Blair Gill both continued their strong starts to their college careers, with Rolls going 2-1 on the weekend in singles and 1-0 in doubles and Gill going 2-0 playing only singles. Both had some tough matchups and trailed at times but secured wins with impressive play down the stretch. Rolls’ cool and methodical game and Gill’s ability to extend points with strong baseline shots both proved to be powerful weapons.
The Cavaliers’ top player, senior Annabelle Xu, played four matches on the weekend — two singles and two doubles — and also went undefeated. Her two doubles wins came with different partners — one with her usual partner, sophomore Martina Genis Salas, and one with Rolls. In those two matches, Xu did not even drop a game. Her two singles outings were slightly less dominant, with her coming back from a steep multiple-break deficit in one. Still, she won both in straight sets and will head to the next ITA event hoping to punch her ticket to the NCAA championships.
Genis Salas, in addition to a dominant doubles win with Xu, won her two singles outings in straight sets. Her patented power from the baseline, coupled with real aggression at the net, overwhelmed her opponents and allowed her to force them to play at her pace.
Meggie Navarro and graduate student Melodie Collard each played only one singles match — both winning their one outing. Navarro paired with Lacy in what appears to be a really strong team based on the small sample of a 3-0 weekend, where Lacy’s strong baseline shots paired excellently with Navarro’s imposing net play. Collard paired with Yang in either player’s only doubles match to defeat a fairly strong Old Dominion duo, with stellar defensive play and Collard’s usual aggressive net play dictating the match.
Though the weekend was ultimately mostly about development, Virginia’s players beefed up their records and showcased their skillsets in their only home matches before mid-January. At times putting on dominant performances and at other times battling against adversity, the team showed signs of excellence that will mean a lot as the fall progresses ahead of a difficult spring schedule.
With no one having qualified yet for the NCAA Singles and Doubles Championships in November, a handful of Cavaliers will travel to Blacksburg later this week to participate in the ITA Atlantic Regional — the second of three tournaments through which they can qualify for the individual championships. Both singles finalists and the winner of the doubles bracket will earn a spot.
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