The UCSB women’s tennis team dropped a crucial conference match to rival Cal Poly 4-3 on Saturday as the regular season came to a close for Santa Barbara.
With the loss, UCSB drops to 7-15 overall with a conference record of 4-4 while Cal Poly improves to 6-9 overall with a 3-5 conference record.
The day started out well for Santa Barbara as it won two out of three doubles matches with victories from freshman Jaimee Gilbertson/sophomore Priscila Garcia over Cal Poly 8-4 and senior Kiersten Meehan/freshman Kaiulani Boyer over Cal Poly 8-5. However, the singles matches proved to be the downfall of the Gauchos.
Junior April Scatliffe faced a tough matchup against mustang Jennifer Cornea in the first singles position. Scatliffe’s offensive positing looked strong in the first set, but Cornea’s play was too strong and toppled Scatliffe 6-4, 6-2.
Boyer faced a long and arduous match against Mika Padmanabhan of Cal Poly at the third singles spot. Boyer dealt with a marathon match against Padmanabhan, splitting the first two sets, but Boyer ultimately fell to Padmanabhan 5-7, 7-5, 5-7.
UCSB did have a silver lining in Saturday’s tough loss, a moment that came at the second singles position with victory of Gilbertson over Emily Gibbens of Cal Poly. Gilbertson dropped the first set, but battled back a supreme use of offense to get the victory over Gibbens 3-6, 6-1, 7-5.
With the season now at a close, the Gauchos look forward to the Big West Tournament as they currently sit in fifth place. The tournament is set to kick off Thursday, April 24 at Indian Wells, California.
This article is an online exclusive and did not appear in the print edition of the Daily Nexus.
Photo by Dustin Harris of the Daily Nexus.