No. 2 Liberty Advances to Championship Match With 4-0 Win over No. 3 Campbell
ROCK HILL, S.C. – The Liberty Lady Flames women’s tennis team will play for the 2018 Big South Women’s Tennis Championship on Saturday, as No. 2-seeded Liberty defeated No. 3-seeded Campbell, 4-0, in the semifinals of the tournament on Friday afternoon at the Rock Hill Tennis Center.
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With the win, Liberty moves on to its second-ever Big South Championship title match and will face No. 1 seed Winthrop (18-5) tomorrow at 10 a.m. in a rematch of the 2016 final. Winthrop topped No. 5 Presbyterian, 4-0, earlier in the day on Friday.
The Lady Flames are now 18-8 overall and winners of their last eight matches. Campbell finishes its season at 14-8.
Liberty claimed the doubles session and the No. 4, No. 6 and No. 5 singles matches in the winning effort. Senior captain Evangeline Crist’s 7-6 (0), 6-2 win on court five over the Camels’ Isabel Boada ended the match.
Liberty has now shut out 10 opponents this season, eight by a 7-0 count and the last two (No. 7 Asheville and No. 3 Campbell) by a 4-0 score.
The Lady Flames dominated the doubles session to take an early 1-0 lead in the match. Liberty’s Crist and partner, Anna Dollar, won a deuce point in the first game versus Alexandra Andrivot and Boada and never looked back. Leading 3-0 and 40-30 in the fourth game, Dollar put the Lady Flames’ duo ahead, 4-0, with an unreturnable looping shot over both of her opponents’ heads. Dollar and Crist then took the next two games to win, 6-0, on court one
Meanwhile, Liberty’s Maria Medina and Lara Soares (No. 2 doubles) got off to a strong start in their match, leading 4-1 against Georgina Segarra and Ana Castillo. The Camels’ Lea Cutura and Lou Regen were up, 3-1, early on versus the Lady Flames’ Rebekah Anderson and Grace Hashiguchi.
Medina/Soares and Segarra/Castillo split the next two games to make it 5-2, Liberty, while Anderson/Hashiguchi roared back in their match with Cutura/Regen by taking the next three games and a 4-3 edge. Medina and Soares broke serve to capture their match, 6-2. The Liberty duo’s eighth straight victory provided the Lady Flames a 1-0 advantage.
In singles, Liberty won the first set on all six courts, two of which were in come-from-behind fashion. On court one, Liberty junior Ashley Bongart erased a 5-1 deficit to Castillo, eventually finding herself in a tiebreaker. Tied 5-5, Bongart took the next two points for a 7-6 (5) set one win. On court five, Crist trailed Boada, 5-2, before eventually winning in a tiebreaker, 7-6 (0).
Lady Flames freshman Polina Miroshnichenko (No. 4 singles) was the first to close out her match, as she needed just two sets (6-3, 6-1) in giving Liberty a two-point cushion (2-0) overall. Liberty’s Dollar topped Segarra in the first set on court six, 6-1, but found herself tied, 5-5, in set two. The junior won the final two games and the match, 6-1, 7-5.
With Liberty now leading 3-0, the attention turned to courts one, two, three and five. In the No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3 matches, Campbell flipped the script by winning each second set. However, Crist (No. 5 singles) carried over the momentum from her first-set tiebreaker victory and led, 5-1, in the second. Boada held serve in the next game, but Crist sealed the match, serving her way to a 7-6 (0), 6-2 win, which wrapped up the match at 4-0, Liberty. The senior captain is on 14-match winning streak in singles.
In the remaining matches, Liberty led 1-0 (No. 1), 6-5 (No. 2) and 2-1 (No. 3) in the respective third sets prior to play being discontinued.