Dec. 3, 2010

LOS ANGELES, Calif. - After graduating four seniors last spring, this fall the women's tennis team has seen a lot of new faces. The team has spent the fall conditioning and playing in tournaments throughout California prepping for their regular season, which starts this spring with their first scheduled match on January 16 at 2:30 at the LMU Tennis Center.

This fall the women travelled throughout California participating in the San Diego State Tournament, the Saint Mary's Invitational, the Cal State Fullerton Invitational, the ITA Regional Tournament, the Cal State Northridge Tournament, and the UC Irvine Invitational.

Head Coach Jamie Sanchez said, "The team acquired quite a bit of competitive experience playing in a variety of tournaments this fall. We used each of these competitions with only one goal in mind; to improve and prepare ourselves for the team competition I the regular season that starts in the spring."

Freshman, April Bisharat kicked off the fall with a bang with a perfect 3-0 winning record at the San Diego State Invitational. After defeating West Coast Conference opponent Marit Raygada of the University of San Diego, 6-2, 6-2 in the first round, Bisharat went on to defeat Emma Cioffi of San Diego State, 6-1, 6-0. For her final victory Bisharat upset Alicia Aguilar of San Diego State in the finals, 7-5, 5-7, 6-3. Aguilar of SDSU had a #65 preseason national singles ranking, putting Bisharat on track to have a successful preseason and possible national singles ranking soon.

Redshirt freshman Adriana Radinovic from Belgrade, Serbia showed some strong singles play throughout the fall with wins over Walker of Northern Arizona, University of Hawaii's Lagmay and University of Kansas' Goff. Radinovic also had a big win over Taylor Raney of UC Riverside in three sets winning 13-11 in the third. Freshman teammate Miya Jin also had strong singles play including wins over Auburn's Schreimann, Korab of Cal State Northridge and University of Pacific's Susan Te. Jin also cumulated five doubles wins throughout the fall most notably over West Coast Conference rival Gonzaga University.

Junior transfer out of Washington state, Ashley Anderson won the SDSU doubles flight with freshman partner Miya Jin with consecutive wins over University of Washington, Auburn and Kansas. Anderson also had strong singles and doubles play against WCC opponent University of San Diego.

In combination with this new talent, the Lions return Melissa Valenzuela, Elisaveta Pironkova, Shauna Morgan, Estelle LaPorte and Jasmin Heckel. Junior Melissa Valenzuela recorded wins over Cal State Bakersfield, Long Beach and Los Angeles while teammate Elisaveta Pironkova had wins over Cal State Stanislaus and UC Irvine. Team captain Estelle LaPorte had wins over University of Pacific and strong doubles play against conference opponent Gonzaga. Finally Shauna Morgan recorded some good singles wins over University of San Francisco's Akerbrant 7-6, 6-7, 6-1 and also went to three sets to record a win over UC Irvine's Young 6-7, 7-5, 6-1.

The Lions will start their spring regular season on January 16 at 2:30 at the LMU Tennis Center against University of Nevada-Reno.