CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – For the second straight match, the Northwestern State tennis team found itself in a battle that came down to the final court Monday.
This time, it came against a team that shared last year’s Southland Conference co-championship with the Lady Demons.
Team captain Sofi Garcia made it a happy trip home for NSU when she prevailed in a third-set tiebreaker 7–3 to secure the No. 5 singles match 7–5, 2–6, 7–6 and seal the 4–3 team victory for the visitors.
Northwestern (6-4 overall, 2-0 in the SLC) edged Texas A&M–Corpus Christi (11-2, 1-1) earning a second consecutive 4–3 Southland Conference road victory on the heels of one Saturday at UT-Rio Grande Valley.
“This was a very good weekend for many reasons,” head coach Marcos Morelli said. “We talk about being tough every day, and our entire team showed toughness and resilience against two very well-coached and strong teams who competed extremely hard.”
The match opened with doubles, where NSU struck first. In the No. 2 slot, Lija Mumlek and Maria Farina secured a 6–3 win and the decisive No. 3 match went to Lady Demons Martina Acebedo Bonocore and Athina Grigoriadou 7–5.
“Winning doubles was very big today,” Morelli said. “Not only because of the final score, but because it created good momentum heading into singles. Our entire lineup showed courage in both doubles and singles.”
In singles, the Islanders rallied to square the match score at 3-3 with the overall outcome on the line at No. 5, and Garcia came through.
“We knew it would be a battle,” Morelli said. “Every player from Corpus fights hard and is well coached. In the end, we executed well under pressure and played the big points well. So did Corpus. It was just a great match.
BASEBALL HOSTS GRAMBLING: There could be balance at the end of Northwestern’s second four-game homestand of the season.
Should the Demons cap the stretch with a win in tonight’s 6 o’clock matchup at Brown-Stroud Field with Grambling, which will air on ESPN+, it would give Northwestern a split of its four straight at home and send the Demons into a road weekend series at UIW with consecutive victories.
Adding to the in-state rivalry theme, Northwestern (6-6) and Grambling (3-8) squared off in a pair of fall exhibition games in Natchitoches that the Demons dominated.
“You’re at a very different point of building and developing your team when you look at playing a game in November versus playing a game right here at the beginning of March,” third-year head coach Chris Bertrand. “I think that’s the case for everybody. It’s not unique to the Demons and to Grambling. What you take from the fall game is you get a chance to look at personnel, and you get a chance to look at style of play, and you get a pretty good idea of how to prepare for the matchup, but I think you’re definitely preparing now for a very different type of baseball team than what you prepared for in the fall.”
The Demons themselves are a different team than they were in that exhibition matchup in the fall. Injuries have kept Northwestern from utilizing its projected starting lineup through the first 12 games of the season.
That has allowed different players to step forward when given opportunities.
The latest was redshirt sophomore Colton Harrison, whose pinch-hit, two-run home run lifted Northwestern to a 5-4 victory against Southeastern Louisiana in Sunday’s series finale.