BATON ROUGE, La. –
Anastassia Kouchnareva was one of three Privateers who earned singles wins while the doubles teams competed fiercely at the ITA Southern Regional in Baton Rouge this weekend.
Kouchnareva started the first day off with a bang in the qualifying draw as she beat LSU's Caroline Arnold. Kouchnareva didn't drop a game in the first set and persevered in a tiebreak to win 6-0, 7-6 (3). Kouchnareva had to retire from her second round qualifying match against 1-seed, Enya Raktic (UAB) due to injury.
Prior to Thursday, last time the Privateers won a match against LSU in the spring was in 2015 when Soledad Calderon won a singles match against Noel Scott.
Ksenia Reznitskaya and
Laurie Barendse also won their first round qualifying matches. Reznitskaya pushed through a third set 10-point tiebreak to beat Emilia Namyslo of Troy 6-4, 4-6, 10-7.
Barendse also won in the third set against Angelina Blinova of Southern Miss 6-3, 2-6, 10-7. Barendse was locked in a fierce battle against UAB's Vanessa Mellynchuk of UAB who was the 8-seed. Mellynchuk got by in the narrowest of margins 6-4, 5-7, 10-8.
The doubles team of Kouchnareva and
Tristanne Dechoux also made noise in the doubles qualifying draw. The tandem polished off a win against a pair from Alabama A&M 8-3 to advance to the second round.
In that match, they took the 3-seed pair of Anastasija Adeikyte and Arina Gamretkaia of McNeese to a tiebreak. The Cowgirls' pair edged out Dechoux and Kouchnareva 7-5 in the tiebreak.
NEXT UP
The Privateers will play at the Golden Eagle Fall Invitational hosted by Southern Miss from Oct. 26-27.
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