Syracuse Claims First ACC Win Against Clemson

The Syracuse women's tennis team got their first ACC win of the year against the Clemson Tigers in Syracuse

Miyuka Kimoto continued her impressive season as Syracuse defeated the visiting Clemson Tigers 4-0 in Syracuse in what marks their first win of ACC play. Syracuse is coming of a streak of three losses since starting ACC play and hope to continue their momentum as they continue the treacherous journey that is ACC women’s tennis. Following the win, Syracuse’s record rises to 7-4 on the season and 1-3 in the ACC after going 1-1 on the weekend following a loss to Georgia Tech on Friday.

Starting off, the doubles point was extremely hard fought for the Orange. The pairing of Ines Fonte and Viktoriya Kanapatskaya took their doubles match easily in a 6-2 win. However, the duo of Shiori Ito and Sofya Treshcheva fell in their match to set up the pairing of Kimoto and Polina Kozyreva to fight for the 1st point of the day. The match went into a tiebreaker with both teams cheering on their respective sides. The tiebreaker went back and forth, but Kimoto and Kozyreva got into a groove and following a net volley by Kozyreva, the duo was able to take the doubles point in favor of the Orange.

Syracuse carried the momentum from the doubles to the singles as they won 3 matches in a row to claim the victory on the day. Fonte, Kanapatskaya and Kimoto all took the wins in their matches to win the match for the Orange. Syracuse went up 2-0 quickly when the first singles match of the day finished as Ines Fonte defeated Clemson’s Ali Despain in straight sets.

The rest of the matches proved to be much longer bouts for the Orange as all of them went into three sets, but a blackout stalled the match for over an hour a half.

“We have a close team; they truly enjoy just hanging out with each other” Coach Younes Limam said on how his team was able to mentally stay in the game regardless of the long delay that they faced in the middle of several matches.

After resuming, Kanapatskaya, after fighting back from one set down, quickly won her match to put the Orange up by 2 and set up Kimoto to grab the win on the day for the Orange. Clemson forfeited the rest of the matches following Kimoto’s win as a result of the match had been going on 5 hours when Kimoto finished her match leaving the matches of Ito, Treshcheva and Kozyreva undecided.

“They’ve been working very hard and just seeing the results come through, that’s big for us,” Coach Limam said about finally getting their first ACC win after having close matches against other opponents earlier in the season.

Syracuse has no matches next weekend and will travel down to North Carolina during spring break. However, their trip may not be much of a vacation as they face two top 10 opponents in North Carolina on Thursday and Duke on Saturday. UNC is ranked #1 in the country and Duke is #9 on the season. The matches will prove to be difficult for this Syracuse team who have struggled so far to pick up wins against top ranked opponents. Syracuse’s ranking as of March 2nd is 73rd in the nation.

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