Last weekend, the Bradley’s women’s tennis team had the opportunity to make history traveling to Western Michigan and University of Illinois at Chicago.
The Braves rode a six-match winning streak going into Saturday’s matchup in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Head coach Matt Tyler spoke highly of his team’s performance during the six-match win streak.
“The girls played great for those six matches,” Tyler said. “We battled through injuries, had a couple girls in our top six that were sitting out, so the other girls stepped in and played some great tennis when they needed to.”
Tyler wasn’t the only one proud of the team’s streak. Freshman Malini Wijesinghe also said she was excited about their performance.
“Coach Tyler has been working really hard the past three years to recruit great players,” Wijesinghe said. “We were really excited because we all worked for that, and we knew that was a goal of ours.”
The team needed to win the match against Western Michigan to tie the record for most consecutive match wins held by the 1992-93 team with seven straight match wins. If they followed that match with a win against University of Illinois at Chicago, the team would have set the all-time record.
Unfortunately, the team bottomed out on Saturday, losing 6-1 to Western Michigan, a team which improved its all-time record against the Braves to 12-0.
The following day, Bradley traveled to Chicago for their first match up with UIC since 1996.
Bradley dropped a pair of 7-6 losses in No. 1 and 2 doubles. Sophomore Alejandra de Lasa and Ashley Thai put the team on the board by winning their singles game, but Bradley eventually went down with a fight to UIC 5-2.
After the back-to-back match loses, Tyler stayed positive about the team.
“The thing about win streaks and losing streaks is that they all come to an end,” Tyler said. “We try not to read into winning streaks or losing streaks too much because things can change pretty quickly.”
To get back on the winning track, Tyler said their doubles play needs to keep improving.
“Against Illinois-Chicago, I felt like we could have won the doubles point,” Tyler said. “We had two really tight matches: No. 1 doubles and No. 2 doubles both lost in tiebreakers.”
This Friday, the women’s team has one home match against Western Illinois before they head on the road again for seven straight matches.
