Tennis Hits the Road for Navy Blue & Gold
10/9/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. - The Seton Hall women's tennis team heads to Annapolis this weekend to take on the field at the Blue & Gold Invitational in what will be the third of four fall tournaments on the schedule for the Pirates.
The Hall will be joined at the three-day event by the hosts, U.S. Naval Academy, as well as Delaware, Howard, LIU-Brooklyn, Longwood, Mary Washington, Towson and BIG EAST rivals Georgetown.
The tournament will be divided into four flights of singles competition and three separate doubles brackets.
Junior Julia Keenan (Greenland, N.H.) led the way when the team last competed two weeks ago at the West Point invitational, recording three consecutive victories to earn a berth in the final-four of the 3rd singles flight. Keenan dropped only one set en route to the semifinals - increasing her season win total to five in the process - and was stopped only by second-seeded Komal Safdar of Syracuse who went on to claim the title.
Keenan is tied atop the team rankings in wins with freshman Katie Kim (Honolulu, Hawaii) who after emerging victorious from the first four matches of her career to take home the B Flight crown at the Quinnipiac Invitational; added a 2nd singles opening round triumph over Lehigh's Brezzy Maravich before falling to second-seeded Yana Nikolaeva (Stony Brook).
Kim prevailed in the Quinnipiac Invitational final over classmate Marisa Quevedo (Tyler Texas) who did not compete at West Point. Fellow newcomer Isabell Klingert (Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany) who also made her way into the semis at Quinnipiac and followed that performance up by registering a pair of wins at West Point as well.
Freshman Luize Liva Strike (Riga, Latvia) advanced to the quarterfinals for the second-consecutive tournament with two victories of her own in the top singles flight, the last of which came over seventh-seeded Sanne Louwers from an LIU-Brooklyn squad that will also make the trip to Annapolis this weekend.
Strike's push for a title was halted by top-seeded Kristina Vozniak but the freshman already has three wins to her credit while playing against the premier competition at each one of the Pirates' stops thus far.
Senior Anna Guryanova (Moscow, Russia) has continued her typically stellar tournament play by adding three victories as well, pushing her career total to 21 in such competitions (21-13, .618).
Classmate Madison Shoemaker (Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia) added a victory in her season debut against Elizabeth Brozovich of Marist while 2014 All-BIG EAST honoree picked up her first win of the fall with a dominant showing against Mara Martinez-Santori of St. Bonaventure in the first round of the top singles flight.
Through two tournaments, the Seton Hall squad has posted a collective winning percentage over 63 percent on the singles court with four of eight players advancing as far as the semifinals of their respective flights.
On the doubles court, Keenan and Liljekvist continued to emerge as a potent pair, earning their way into the first flight quarterfinals by ousting duos from SUNY-Albany and Lehigh in impressive fashion.
With the team missing one player for the second tournament in-a-row, doubles tandems continued to be shifted but Guryanova and Klingert managed to score a victory in their first-ever competitive match as a team.
Given their conference affiliation, Georgetown is the opponent with which the Pirates will be most familiar this weekend and The Hall will look to set the tone for the spring in matchups with the Hoyas. Last fall, Georgetown squeaked by with a 4-3 win in Washington D.C. but Liljekvist contributed to an impressive Seton Hall sweep of the top-three singles positions.
Play from Annapolis is scheduled to begin at Noon on Friday, October 10 and will carry through three consecutive days with finals being held on Sunday, October 12.
