Tennis

UH battles the best of Texas at ITA Regionals

Junior Bryony Hunter teamed with senior Giorgia Pozzan to advance to the finals in their doubles draw before falling to a duo from Stephen F. Austin. | Courtesy of UH Athletics

Two freshmen highlighted play at the ITA Regionals in Fort Worth for the Cougars.

Charlotte Phillips and Leslot Koenen each won four matches during the five-day tournament to advance to the semi-finals of singles consolation play, where they were scheduled to face each other, but the team opted to skip the head-to-head matchup.

“Charlotte played pretty well and only lost one match to the No. 1 player from UTEP,” head coach John Severance said. “But she was in complete control of the match. She made some unforced errors, but she had a very good tournament.”

Giorgia Pozzan got her first loss of the season. After winning her opening round match in the main singles draw, Pozzan lost in three sets to Noel Scott of Texas.

Pozzan also teamed with Bryony Hunter in doubles play.

After dropping their first match to a Texas A&M duo, they won against pairs from Texas A&M Corpus Christi and TCU. They lost in the consolation finals to seventh-seeded Stephen F. Austin.

The ITA tournaments are tough to measure success by merely wins and losses because they are not flighted. In flighted tournaments, school’s top-seeded players play against other school’s top-seeded players, second seeds against second seed and so on. The ITAs allow for all seeds to compete against each other, creating matchups that ordinarily would not occur.

“It’s tough to judge,” Severance said. “We had some good wins, but also a couple of losses I didn’t think would happen.

“We still need to clean up our errors and serve at a higher percentage and be even more disciplined in our shot selection alone. That’s what we’ll try to focus on.”

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