Women's Tennis Opens Season at Home Saturday with Two Matches

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The Lobo women’s team will get a pair of home matches to start the season. Someone will have to make sure the team doesn’t head to the airport.

One year after playing a grand total of three home matches, UNM will play the first two of 11 home matches on Saturday inside the Linda Estes Tennis Bubbles, taking on Western New Mexico at 9 am before hosting Colorado College at 4 pm.  In between, Western New Mexico and Colorado College will play against each other at 12:30 pm.

The Lobos went 10-10 last year after going 11-11, but the 2024 Lobos are a veteran group.  All but Satoho Toriumi returns from 2023.  Leonie Hoppe and Katherine Jhang led the team in the fall with seven wins each, and both had seven doubles wins as well.  Jhang last season recorded 17 wins in singles a year ago along with Hsuan Huang, who was one behind Maud Vandeputte, who led the team with 18 wins.

UNM does return 98 of its 104 wins from a year ago, and 54 of its 59 doubles wins, meaning overall, UNM returns 93.2% of its wins from a season in which UNM won 57.4% of its matches.  UNM added Bente Vandeputte, Maud’s twin sister.  Bente won 22 singles matches last year at St. Francis, going 22-11, adding 13 doubles wins to that.

For UNM, a team that played only three times at home last season, playing 11 out of 23 at home is a welcome change as the Lobos were tough at home, turning in a win against No. 58 Fresno State last season.