Lady Jackets Upset #9 Ranked Northwestern, Men Demolish USC Upstate

For their season opener, the #16 ranked Lady Yellow Jackets earned a huge upset win over the 9th ranked team in the country. Northwestern fought hard, but it was ultimately the Lady Jackets who proved to be the stronger team on the 23rd of January at the Bill Moore Tennis Center.

Junior Caroline Lilley.

Sasha Krupina and Caroline Lilley got the ball rolling with an 8-4 win over Linda Abu Mushrefova and Nida Hamilton at the #1 spot. Viet Ha Ngo and Jillian O’Neill followed in their footsteps and conquered in a tight 8-5 battle at the #2 doubles position to clinch the doubles point.

Winners in singles for the Lady Jackets were Caroline Lilley at #2, Jillian O’Neill at #3, Sasha Krupina at #5, and Elizabeth Kilborn at #6.

Coach Bryan Shelton seemed pleased with his team’s performance with the following quote:

“Overall, I am happy for the whole team. We did some things better than we did last weekend and we executed better. This is a good sign that we improved just over this past week.”

The men also had a strong opening day, winning in true fashion with a 7-0 score against USC Upstate.

All of the Jackets won their matches against the Spartans, only losing 21 games combined in the 9 matches played.

Senior Guillermo Gomez dominated at #1 singles.

Head Coach Kenny Thor appeared happy with the team’s success:

“I get excited when we do the fundamentals very well and I felt like that is what we did today.”