Through three weekends of play, the Notre Dame women’s tennis team sits at 7-0. The Irish began the season with an unblemished five-game homestand that featured a defeat of Big Ten opponent Illinois. They hit the road for the first time last weekend, rallying from behind to beat Maryland and Columbia.
This weekend, Notre Dame will put the undefeated record up against its first ranked adversary of the season. No. 17 Ohio State will visit South Bend at 4 p.m. on Friday before Bellarmine moves in for a Sunday doubleheader. Notre Dame will take on the Knights at noon and 4 p.m. on the weekend’s final day.
Rankings update
On Wednesday, the Intercollegiate Tennis Association released its new singles and doubles ranking. Notre Dame junior Akari Matsuno moved from No. 67 to No. 71 in singles, as she’s off to a 3-0 start this season. She and senior Carrie Beckman have combined to post another 3-0 mark as the No. 1 Irish doubles team.
To no one’s surprise, Ohio State has numerous entries in the new rankings. Sophomore Luciana Perry, a singles All-American in both the spring and fall of 2024, leads the pack at No. 9 in singles. Including the fall season, the 2024 Big Ten Freshman of the Year and ITA National Rookie of the Year is 16-5 in singles.
At 16-7, fellow sophomore Teah Chavez checks in at No. 55. Formerly a top-10 ranked player in Canada, she went 19-16 in singles as a freshman. Sophomore Audrey Spencer ranks 60th with a 13-9 singles record this year. As a freshman, she was 20-10. Finally, Japanese freshman Nao Nishino holds the No. 107 spot at 15-5.
In the doubles rankings, sophomore Alessia Cau and senior Dani Schoenly occupy the No. 63 position. They have not appeared yet together in the spring dual season.
Ohio State
The Buckeyes come off a bye week and carry a 3-1 record into South Bend. They opened the year with three straight wins against Cleveland State, Bellarmine and N.C. State before losing the ITA Kickoff Weekend championship match to No. 1 Tennessee on Jan. 25.
In that loss to Tennessee, Chavez and Nishino scored massive wins to jump into the national rankings. The former dominated No. 19 Catherine Aulia (6-2, 6-2), while the latter took down No. 54 Vanesa Suarez (6-1, 6-3). The Buckeyes had a tough time in doubles play, though, dropping 17 of the 25 games that they played against the Volunteers.
Last year, the Buckeyes went 20-8, losing to Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament final for a third consecutive season. Ohio State posted a 10-1 conference record, taking an upset loss to Vanderbilt at home in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Before all of that, the Buckeyes swept the Irish in Columbus during ITA Kickoff Weekend at the end of January. Only senior Nibi Ghosh found real success on that day, claiming the first set of an unfinished No. 6 singles match against Spencer.
Bellarmine
The Knights enter the weekend at 2-6, having lost each of their first six games with only two points registered during the stretch. Last weekend, they found the win column with home defeats of the University of the Cumberlands and Marian University.
A standout program in the Division II ranks before the COVID-19 pandemic, Bellarmine has struggled with its move to Division I and the Atlantic Sun Conference. The Knights went a combined 1-39 in 2020-21 and 2021-22 but have improved since. They were 9-17 a year ago with wins against Louisville and Marquette along the way.
Austrian sophomore Nikola Kollaritsch is the only Knight on the roster to have earned ASUN postseason recognition last year. She landed on the conference’s All-Freshman Team, compiling 27 total wins between singles and doubles play. She’s off to a 3-4 singles start to this season, while senior Ekaterina Tikhonko is 2-5 as the team’s usual No. 1 singles competitor.
