Seton Hall University
Georgetown
Klingert Extends Streak in Narrow Loss to Hoyas
3/8/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
MORRISTOWN, N.J. - For the second-straight year, the Seton Hall tennis team earned a split of six singles matches in a head-to-head matchup with BIG EAST rival Georgetown but the Hoyas came away with a narrow 4-3 victory on Saturday by virtue of claiming a point in doubles competition.
The Hall (3-5, 0-1 BIG EAST) entered the matchup with wins in its last two outings and came within one set of prevailing over Georgetown (6-1, 1-1 BIG EAST) for the first time since 2009 behind singles victories for a trio of juniors in Hannah Liljekvist (Djursholm, Sweden), Julia Keenan (Greenland, N.H.) and Isabell Klingert (Oberbalbach, Germany).
Impressively, their respective wins came against the three players that had paced a 5-1 start for Georgetown this spring.
Liljekvist dropped just six games in a dominant performance against Victoire Saperstein, scoring from the top singles position with a 7-5, 6-1 result. The win stopped a three-match unbeaten streak for Saperstein and gave the Georgetown sophomore just her second loss in seven appearances at #1 this season.
In her first spring as the Pirates primary first singles player, Liljekvist has now won four of her last six matches as an individual.
Keenan's victory was a hard-fought one against Liselot Koenen at #4 as she managed to outlast her opponent in a three-set battle. Keenan took the first with relative ease, yielding only one game, but fell in the second frame, 5-7. With the point up for grabs, the New Hampshire product doubled Koenen up in the decisive set to take a 6-1, 5-7, 6-3 win.
Koenen had posted a 4-1 record in five previous outings in fourth singles but Keenan - the Pirates' singles wins leader a season ago - is beginning to build a run of her own with wins in three of her last four appearances.
At #5, Klingert continued her rampant run through the competition that has spanned over a month since the beginning of the spring slate, overpowering GU freshman Daphne de Chatellus (6-3, 6-2) to record her 10th consecutive singles win.
With her unbeaten run reaching double-digits, Klingert eclipsed the mark of nine-straight victories set by Keenan in 2014 for the longest winning streak by a Pirate in the program's time under head coach Greg Wyzykowski.
All nine of Keenan's wins in her streak came last spring in a dual match setting while the first three of Klingert's current run were part of a C flight title-winning performance at the NJIT Winter Invitational.
de Chatellus held a 4-2 singles mark entering the contest that featured three wins in four appearances at #5.
All told, Saperstein, Koenen and de Chatellus had combined to post a 13-4 (.765) record through six matches for Georgetown prior to Saturday as opposed to a 9-8 mark for the rest of the squad.
The Hoyas swept three doubles matches to head into singles play with a one-point advantage however and came up with an answer for each Pirate victory.
After Liljekvist leveled the score at 1-1, Sophie Barnard got past Katie Kim (Honolulu, Hawaii) in third singles (6-1, 7-5). Klingert pulled SHU even yet again but in her first match back from injury, freshman Marisa Quevedo (Tyler, Texas) came up just short against Georgetown senior Sophie Panarese despite a valiant effort at #2 (6-2, 4-6, 6-0).
Keenan put away Koenen to leave the match to be decided from the sixth position where GU's Casey Marx was able to rally from a one-set deficit against Madison Shoemaker (Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia) to help the Hoyas squeak past the Pirates by a single point for the second year in-a-row.
Quevedo's return to action brought Seton Hall closer to full strength but The Hall was still without the services of standout freshman Luize Strike (Riga, Latvia) who had been penciled into the second singles position before being sidelined.
The Pirates will make their spring break trip to San Diego, Calif. next week where they will play three matches in three days beginning with a matchup against Cal State-Los Angeles on Tuesday, March 10. Start-time is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. eastern.
Seton Hall 3, Georgetown 4
Doubles
#1. Koenen/Panarese (GU) def. Keenan/Liljekvist (SHU), 8-5
#2. Perz/Saperstein (GU) def. Kim/Shoemaker (SHU), 8-4
#3. Barnard/Marx (GU) def. Guryanova/Klingert (SHU), 8-1
Order of Finish: 2, 3, 1
Singles
#1. Hannah Liljekvist (SHU) def. Victoire Saperstein (GU), 7-5, 6-1
#2. Sophie Panarese (GU) def. Marisa Quevedo (SHU), 6-2, 4-6, 6-0
#3. Sophie Barnard (GU) def. Katie Kim (SHU), 6-1, 7-5
#4. Julia Keenan (SHU) def. Liselot Koenen (GU), 6-1, 5-7, 6-3
#5. Isabell Klingert (SHU) def. Daphne de Chatellus (GU), 6-3, 6-2
#6. Casey Marx (GU) def. Madison Shoemaker (SHU), 2-6, 6-3, 6-3
Order of Finish: 1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 6
