Women’s Tennis: UConn looks to finish fall season on high note

By Luke Owen
Octo­ber 21st, 2022
The Dai­ly Campus

After five con­sec­u­tive week­ends of tour­na­ments, the UConn women’s ten­nis team will look to fin­ish the fall por­tion of their sea­son on a high note this week­end as they head to Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, to com­pete in the Brown Invitational. 

This past week­end, UConn had a hum­bling out­ing at the Prince­ton Invi­ta­tion­al, where the Huskies had an over­all team record of 8–22 across all match­es; A step back from their sol­id show­ing at the ITA Region­al Cham­pi­onship two week­ends ago. 

Luck­i­ly for the Huskies, there is one final tour­na­ment this week­end, mean­ing one last chance to get that sour taste out of their mouth before the win­ter break. 

“We want our play­ers to feel strong and con­fi­dent head­ing into the spring sea­son,” said Head Coach Glenn Marshall. 

How­ev­er, that may be tough for UConn, who will face off against tough com­pe­ti­tion this week­end with top pro­grams such as Dart­mouth, Yale, UMass, and the host­ing Brown in attendance. 

“It’s a good, chal­leng­ing tour­na­ment for us to see where we are at and where we’ve come,” said Marshall. 

A year ago, when the Huskies com­pet­ed in this invi­ta­tion­al, Isabel Petri Bere, then a fresh­man, had an excel­lent show­ing, win­ning all three of her sin­gles and two of her three dou­bles matches. 

Fur­ther­more, the Huskies fin­ished that week­end with an over­all record of 12–11, which served as a momen­tum builder head­ing into the win­ter break. 

This tour­na­ment, as all the fall tour­na­ments do, will be used as a build­ing block for UConn, as they aim to com­pete near the top of the Big East this upcom­ing spring sea­son after an unflat­ter­ing 10–12 over­all record last season. 

“All this match play that we have in the fall will pre­pare us for team events come spring,” Mar­shall said. 

New addi­tions to the UConn team have proved fruit­ful. Accord­ing to Mar­shall, Olivia Wright, a trans­fer from Prov­i­dence (anoth­er Big East pro­gram) will play at the top of the line­up imme­di­ate­ly in the spring. 

Last week­end, Wright enjoyed a pair of dou­bles vic­to­ries with her team­mate Petri Bere, a sil­ver lin­ing to the team’s dis­ap­point­ing outing. 

Addi­tion­al­ly, accord­ing to Mar­shall, Maria Con­stan­ti­nou, a trans­fer from Delaware, will be play­ing toward the top three of the line­up as well come spring. 

These top-of-the-line­up, imme­di­ate-impact addi­tions will join forces with three return­ing seniors. 

“We’ve got a deep team, prob­a­bly a deep­er team than we’ve had the past three or four years. All the way down the line­up, we’ve got­ten a lit­tle bit stronger,” said Marshall. 

But Mar­shall is not look­ing too far ahead, stat­ing the impor­tance of the fall por­tion of the sea­son and this weekend. 

“In the fall, you have a lot of oppor­tu­ni­ties to work on your game, real­ly devel­op, and get chal­lenged in match play on week­ends like this at Brown,” said Marshall.