Women's Tennis Opens at Home Friday vs. NAU & ACU
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The weather outside may truly be frightful, but that is of no worry right now to the New Mexico Lobo women’s tennis team. The squad is just thrilled to have an indoor facility with six courts, as its weekend matches are on. The Lobos will open the home portion of the 2022 schedule with a Friday afternoon home match against Northern Arizona and a Sunday morning home match with Abilene Christian.
Both matches will take place in the Linda Estes Tennis Center Indoor Bubbles. Fans will not need to bring a vaccination card or proof of a negative test, but fans will need to wear a mask while inside the facility. The Friday match with Northern Arizona starts at noon, and Sunday’s match with Abilene Christian starts at 10 a.m., and both are free to the public.
The Lobos are 3-0 on the young season, winning all three road matches in Colorado, defeating Colorado College 7-0, Metro State 5-2 and CSU Pueblo 5-0. The Lobos bolted out in all three matches, sweeping all three doubles points, winning nine matches total. Yue Lin “Polly” Chen and Myu Kageyama teamed up to go 3-0 at No. 1 doubles. Hsuan Huang played three matches at No. 2 doubles, going 2-0 with Hsiang-Wen “Albie” Huang and 1-0 with Maria Sodre. UNM used two different teams at No. 3, with Sarah O’Connor and Maria Sodre going 2-0 and Albie Huang and Satoho Toriumi went 1-0.
That 9-0 run in double spushed UNM to 20-15 overall counting the fall season. Where UNM has been really good is singles, and the team went 14-2 over the three matches. Kageyama went 3-0 at No. 3 singles, giving her a perfect 6-0 weekend. Albie Huang also went 3-0 at No. 4 singles and Hsuan Huang went 2-0 at No. 5. Overall, UNM is now 56-29 in singles for the entire year, a .659 winning percentage.
Northern Arizona is 0-1 on the season, losing 7-0 to Arizona State. NAU is used to Albuquerque however as NAU came and participated in the UNM Halloween Howl back in October. As for Abilene Christian, the match on Sunday will be their 10th of the season (they and Northern Arizona will play on Saturday at 10 am in a neutral site match). The Wildcats opened the season with four straight losses, losing to TCU, North Texas, SMU and Texas Tech by identical 4-0 scores. Since, they have defeated UTSA 4-3, Angelo State 6-1, Dallas Baptist 7-0 and Tyler Junior College 5-2.
The home matches for UNM are the first of four straight at home for the team, all in February. After this week, UNM will host New Mexico State on February 12 and Grand Canyon on February 18.