Women's Tennis | 2/6/2015 9:48:00 AM
MIAMI SHORES, Fla. – Barry University women's tennis team will open the season 3 p.m. Tuesday against Palm Beach Atlantic at Buccaneer Tennis Center.
The Buccaneers return seven players from last year's NCAA Division II Championship team which went 28-1. With the addition of talented freshman
Sonja Larsen, the Bucs take an experienced lineup into the spring in their bid to repeat. No tennis team in Barry history has won back-to-back titles.
Barry will enter the spring with the No. 1 ranking, marking the first time in school history the Bucs will begin a season ranked at the top of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association national poll.
Senior
Linda Fritschken is 23 singles wins shy of the school record of 73 set by Greta Trotman in 2006. Her .911 career singles winning percentage ranks fourth all-time at Barry. Her highest singles victories total in a season, however, is 20 during her sophomore year. Fritschken will likely shatter the doubles victories record this year as she is five wins away from breaking Trotman and Bojana Miladinovic's school record of 76. Fritschken's .900 career doubles winning percentage ranks first in school history. She's had a school-best 25 pairs victories in each of the past two seasons.
Juniors
Emma Onila and
Elisabeth Abanda, once doubles partners who, like Fritschken, have won All-American honors in the past, return after solid fall performances. Onila and Fritschken won the ITA South Region, Small College and Super Bowl Championships in the fall. Onila has the third-best doubles winning percentage (.854) in school history. In fact, three of Barry's current players rank at the top of that category as junior
Karina Goia is second with an .885 mark. Like Fritschken, Onila won 20 singles matches in 2013. No current Bucs player has ever won more than 20 matches in a season. Abanda went 19-3 a year ago in singles, and was 13-2 in doubles before being removed from the pairs lineup. She partnered with junior
Kimmy Twelker to advance to the Varner Invitational's top doubles bracket final in the fall, and moved on to the singles semifinals in that tournament.
Twelker is coming off a 15-0 record -- primarily at the Nos. 5 and 6 flights -- a year ago. Her singles winning percentage last year matched that of former National Player of the Year Barbi Pocza for the best in school history. She and sophomore
Ana Pain were doubles All-Americans last year. Goia was a singles All-American in 2014 after going 16-1. She's won 23 doubles matches in both of her years at Barry. Pain won 20 pairs matches as a freshman.
Sophomore
Jasi Witherspoon had a solid fall, advancing to the finals of the Varner Invitational D Bracket singles tournament. Larsen advanced to the semifinals in singles and doubles at the ITA South Region Championships.
The Bucs will play 11 home matches this season, including six in March. They meet No. 2 Armstrong Atlantic Feb. 22 in Winter Park, Fla., in a big in-season tilt against the team they knocked off to win the national title a year ago. An April 2 match versus Sunshine State Conference rival Lynn at home will begin the stretch run before the postseason.
The SSC Championships is set for April 23-25 in Saint Leo, Fla. The NCAA South Regional is scheduled for May 2-4 at a site to be determined, and the NCAA Championships in Surprise, Ariz., run May 13-16.
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