The Northern Iowa Women’s tennis team had two matches this past weekend against Northern Illinois and Chicago State.  The Panthers first traveled to play against Northern Illinois in Dekalb, Ill. UNI’s tennis team was 2-7 coming into last weekend’s matches against Northern Illinois. The Panther women were swept in all of the singles matches, starting the day of poorly with a score of 0-6. UNI’s number two singles, Madeline Doherty, was close against Rakita Anastasia and pushed it to three sets. However, she ultimately lost 4-6, 6-0, 6-1 which was the Panthers’ closest single match of the day. Northern Iowa also lost all three of the singles matches, with the final match score of  0-7 to hand the Purple and Gold their 8th loss of the season. The strongest match was Maria Potsi for Northern Illinois defeated number one singles Emma Carr by a score of 6-1, 6-3.

The Panthers’ next match was Saturday against Chicago State.  The match was played in Park Forest, Ill. and UNI was looking to bounce back after their tough outing the day before. UNI made this much closer this time and won doubles from the two and six seeded doubles against Chicago State. Thaissa Moreira from UNI defeated Sofiya Sedovich by a score of 6-2, 3-0 for two singles.  Issa Sullivan from UNI also won by default at the six singles position.

After the singles matches the Panthers were down 4-2, with the doubles play up next. Thaissa Moreira and Val Caro won the number two doubles by a score of 6-0 and Madeline Dohery and Issa Sullivan took their match by default, but the tandem of Emma Carr and Olivia Fain dropped the number one doubles by a score of 7-5. This resulted in the close 4-3 defeat at the hands of Chicago State, dropping UNI’s overall record to 2-9 on the year.

Up next, the Panther women will play Valparaiso on Friday, April 2 at 3 p.m. in Waterloo, where they will look to end their three-game skid.