Colorado State tennis kept tensions up in its match against Air Force Friday.
The teams had spectators on the edges of their seats, but the Rams fell short 4-2. After losing doubles, the Rams came back strong in singles. They played their singles close and kept them all winnable. Four of the matches went to three sets.
“I’m proud of their fight,” coach Mai-Ly Tran said. “I knew it was going to be a fight and it was going to be a close one. I told them to expect it to be really close towards the end and it was. I think we were prepared for that.”
Being the final home match of the season as well as senior day, the team was determined to put their all onto the court to finish strong at home.
“The fans were great,” Tran said. “They were bringing energy when our team played well, and I think that really fed into how they were playing, and they wanted to fight for them.”
In a stressfully close match, Diana Lizarazo showed she can preform under pressure.
The first set was a back and forth with Lizarazo coming out on top with a 7-5 win. Her second set was marked with close games that led to a 6-2 loss.
In her final set, the stakes were high. Viktoryia Zhadzinskaya had just lost her match in the third set. Lizarazo’s final set would determine whether the dual would continue.
“There were so many people here,” Lizarazo said. “The atmosphere was great since the beginning, the ceremony, the warmup, everything — I wanted to make the best day for them.”
The third set was tied 6-6 and went to a tiebreaker. Lizarazo owned the tiebreaker 7-3 and won her match.
The single matches saw a change in the team from the doubles. This shift was immediately apparent through Victoria Erechtchenko.
“The work I’ve been putting in has been paying off,” Erechtchenko said. “It’s thanks to my coaches that I’ve been playing better these last couple matches. I feel like I finally found my game style. I think I’ll keep improving.”
She made quick work of her match in two sets, winning them each 6-4.
Erechtchenko’s early win set the tone for the rest of the match. It was clear that, despite the losses in the doubles, victory was still within an arm’s reach.
As the match neared the end, Logan Voeks and Sarah Weekley played in their third sets. Voeks played a close match all the way through and ended 5-2 in her set.
The match concluded when Weekley lost her third set 6-4 after a hard-fought match.
“I think there’s a lot of victories,” Tran said. “ Not just the actual result wins, but we’ve been building in an upward trajectory. They want these wins, especially going into the tournament. We’re getting closer and closer; we just need to cross the finish line.”
With the conference tournament in a few weeks, the Rams showed they can put up a fight in any situation. Coming up, the team will need to win in Wyoming and come through in match ups when they matter most.
“We’ll have our match in Wyoming next,” Erechtchenko said. “That one’s gonna be an exciting one, a tough one for sure. The Wyoming crowd is as crazy as ours, if not crazier. So, that’s probably the best kind of preparation you can have before the conference tournament.”
Reach Mason Ford at sports@collegian.com or on X @mason_ford2891.
