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WOMEN'S TENNIS: As the team wraps up its most successful season ever, it perhaps should come as no surprise that the team also garnered the most post-season awards in the program's history this year.
SUU had a record four players named to the 12 player 2011 all-Summit League team, while freshman Alex Ivanova (Evpatoria, Ukraine) wasn amed Newcomer of the Year and coach Lenny Lee was named Coach of the Year for the third time in the last four years.
Joining Ivanova on the all-league squad are junior Ksusha Nazarova (Moscow), sophomore Olia Tatarchenko (Rostov On Don, Russia) and freshman Danica Ingwaldson (Las Vegas).
Lee guided the team to a 16-2 season, including a 7-1 mark in conference play, after the Thunderbirds were picked to finish third in the league's preseason poll. Both win totals are school records, as are the respective winning percentages of 88.9 and 87.5, and the team has currently won a school-record 13 consecutive matches.
WOMEN'S TENNIS: At Ft. Wayne, Ind., the season to a disappointing end Friday night when third seed UMKC upset the second seeded Thunderbirds, 4-2, in the semifinal round of the Summit League Tournament.
UMKC, which lost a 5-2 decision to the Thunderbirds earlier in the season, won the doubles points, then got points at second, fifth and sixth singles to claim the win and advance to the championship round of the tournament. The Kangaroos will face defending champion and 2011 regular-season champ IPFW Saturday for the title.
The Kangaroos got wins at second and third doubles as Laura Bouet and Suzan Lisenby took an 8-3 win over Kirrily Burden and Alex Ivanova,8-3, at No. 2 while Gabriela Pintos and Jillian Yakominich got past SUU's Danica Ingwaldson and Afton Staheli by an 8-4 count. With the doubles point decided the match between SUU's Ksusha Nazarova and Olia Tatarchenko vs. Eva Dalvai and Chelsea Horner was stopped with Nazarova and Tatarchenko holding a6-3 lead.
Southern Utah briefly took the lead, as Tatarchenko beat Horner, 6-2, 6-0 at No. 3 and Burden claimed a 6-0, 6-2 win over Lisenby at No.4, but Bouet pulled things even with a 6-2, 6-1 win over Summit League Newcomer of the Year Ivanova at No. 2.
The 'Roos pulled ahead 3-2 after Gabriela Pintos beat Staheli by a 6-4, 6-0 count at No. 6, thenwon the match when Yakominich outlasted Ingwaldson, 6-4, 6-3, at No. 5. Theloss was just the second all season for Ingwaldson, who finished the year witha 17-2 record.
With her win Tatarchenko improved to 18-1 on the season to set the SUU record for wins and winning percentage in a season.
The match was delayed over 2½ hours after the tournament was moved indoors because of inclement weather.
"It was disappointing to lose, but UMKC played very well tonight," SUU Coach Lenny Lee said. "We had a successful season and we'll look forward to next year, when we will have everyone back from this year's team."
SUU, which saw a school-record 13-match winning streak come to an end Friday, finished the season at 16-3, the best mark in school history. UMKC improved to 12-12 with the win.