Wednesday, February 08, 2012

ETSU returns to action after an 11-day layoff

ATLANTA  (Feb. 8, 2012) – The ETSU women’s tennis team gets back to action on Thursday – following an 11-day layoff – as it travels to Piedmont Park in Atlanta to take on No. 47 Georgia State at 2 p.m.

Thursday begins a six-match road swing for ETSU (1-0), which includes two ranked opponents back-to-back with Georgia State and No. 61 Virginia Tech on Saturday. The Bucs are then slated to play Appalachian State (Feb. 19), UNC Wilmington (Feb. 24), South Carolina State (Feb. 25) and UNC Asheville (Mar. 1) before finally returning home to take on Liberty on Mar. 3.

ETSU started the season back on Jan. 28 by defeating Radford 4-3 at the Bristol Racquet Club. In that matchup, ETSU swept the Highlanders in doubles through set scores of 8-6, 9-8 and 8-7 to go up 1-0 for the match, and split singles 3-3 to eventually take the victory.

Senior Paula Jaime (Madrid, Spain) – the No. 115-ranked ITA women’s singles player – earned her first victory of dual match play in a 6-1, 6-3 decision over Radford’s Petra Dajevic. Jaime enters Thursday with a 13-3 overall singles record this season after going 12-3 through fall tournament play.

Freshman Kelsey Williams (Sunbury, Australia) and senior Marine Wieliczko (Rouen, France) also started dual play 1-0, with Williams taking down Taylor Newman decisively, 6-1, 6-2, and Wieliczko sealing the match for ETSU after coming back from a set down to defeat Hannah Crawford 3-6, 6-3, 6-3.

Georgia State (3-1) recently climbed to No. 47 in the ITA women’s national team rankings following a 4-2 victory over then-No. 43 William and Mary on Jan. 28. That weekend, the Panthers went 1-1 after falling to then-No. 13 Georgia Tech on Friday. The Panthers’ No. 47 ranking is their highest since 2009, when they were ranked No. 46.

ETSU and Georgia State have split their last two meetings by a score of 4-3 each time, with the Panthers taking the match last year in Atlanta and ETSU getting the better of Georgia State two years ago in Bristol.

Fans wishing to follow the action can do so via live stats and a live blog provided by GeorgiaStateSports.com.

For more information on ETSU tennis, please visit ETSUBucs.com and click on the tennis links.