Senior Megan Hackman swats tennis ball at home match
Courtesy | Hillsdale Athletic Department
The Charger women’s tennis team improved its record to 4-0 after beating Goshen College 5-2 on Feb. 7 and Saginaw Valley State University 5-2 on Feb. 8.
“We had two matches that we could have let slip away from us, but we really took advantage of all of our opportunities, and we just keep coming out and trying to do our best every day,” head coach Melanie Zampardo said.
At No. 1 singles, junior Ané Dannhauser beat Goshen 6-1, 6-2, and Saginaw 7-6, 6-3, earning her Great Midwest Athletic Conference Women’s Tennis Player of the Week for the seventh time in her career.
“G-MAC athlete of the week is always a wonderful surprise,” Dannhauser said. “I was with my team when I found out, and we could all celebrate and just recognize that all the hard work is paying off. But the plan is to just take it one match at a time.”
The team won the doubles point in both matches. At one point in the match against Saginaw, the Chargers were down on all three doubles courts, but they came back to win the doubles point and win the match.
“There was a point where all three courts were down, and we just weren’t playing our best,” Zampardo said. “But at the same time, our energy was so good that I knew that we were gonna turn around. I never had a doubt in my mind.”
Dannhauser and senior Megan Hackman beat Saginaw 7-5 at the No. 1 doubles match.
“This was the best outcome from the weekend I could have possibly asked for, to be honest,” Dannhauser said. “We were kind of nervous going up against Saginaw because they have always been good, and to beat them was just amazing.”
Sophomore Briana Rees and senior Bella Spinazze lost to Saginaw 4-6 at No. 2 doubles, while freshman Dimitra Papastavrou and sophomore Julia Zlateva beat Saginaw 7-6 at No. 3 doubles.
Freshman Esther Sura played her singles match against Saginaw on a court off to the side, beating her opponent 7-5, 6-0. A curtain divided Sura’s court from the rest of the courts, making it so that Sura couldn’t see the rest of her team’s matches.
“Mentally, that’s a really tough battle to go through, and just to not know what’s going on on the other side, but to just know that you have to hunker down and do your best,” Zampardo said. “And she did. She killed it. She had a great match.”
Sura said the team encouraged each other this weekend to battle through the tough matches against Goshen and Saginaw and come back when they were down.
“Every meet we have, we have built off of it coming into the next one,” Sura said. “We just keep increasing the energy, the cheering, the intensity, we just keep building up. There is no limit. There is no good enough, we just keep on going up and we keep on building.”
Against Goshen, Dannhauser and Hackman won 6-2 at No. 1 doubles, Rees and Spinazze won 6-4 at No. 2, and Papastavrou and Zlateva won 6-2 at No. 3.
At No. 2 and No. 5 singles, Rees and Zlateva won their matches against Goshen and Saginaw, respectively. At No. 6 singles, Sura also won her match against Goshen.
The Chargers will face Purdue University Northwest in their next match at home Feb. 14 at 12 p.m.
