Baylor
NCAA Championships
Kovac, Parekh Advance in NCAA Women's Doubles Draw
5/22/2001 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
May 22, 2001
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. - The Baylor women's tennis team saw mixed results Tuesday as the doubles team of senior Jahnavi Parekh and junior Katja Kovac won its opening round match in the NCAA Doubles Championships, but Kovac and Parekh each lost their first round singles matches.
The doubles team advances to the second round Wednesday afternoon, where the Bears will face Arizona's 32nd-ranked team of Michelle Gough and Sophie Regnier, who upset Georgia's No. 14 Lori Grey and Aarthi Venketesan in the first round.
Play began Tuesday morning with rain, which forced the relocation of the entire first round of the singles tournament from the Lincoln Tennis Center in Stone Mountain to indoor courts on the Georgia Tech campus.
Kovac, ranked 37th nationally, began her match against fifth-ranked Nataly Cahana of Old Dominion outdoors. Kovac lost the first set and trailed in the second when the rains began. Indoors, Kovac took advantage of a faster court to bounce back and win the second set and take a 2-0 lead in the third set. The Baylor junior had numerous opportunities to go up 3-0 in the deciding set, but Cahana stayed in the match, eventually winning that game and then taking the next five games to win the match, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2.
"Katja played hard and played well," Baylor head coach Dave Luedtke said. "She had all the momentum, but just couldn't finish it of. Give credit to Cahana, she stayed in there and made some things happen."
Kovac finishes her junior season as the school recordholder for career singles wins, ending the year one win shy of 100 for her three years at Baylor. Her 35 wins this season are the second-highest total in school history, four short of Parekh's 1999-2000 total of 39 wins.
Parekh, ranked 34th, lost in three sets to No. 21 Mariel Verban of Georgia, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3. After taking the first set, there was a descrepancy in set two between what Parekh thought the score to be and what the referee had for the score. Verban ended up taking the second and third sets to win the match.
"It was a well-played match," Luedkte said. "It was a huge battle, really good tennis. It's too bad it had to come down to that argument on the score."
Parekh was making her second straight appearance in the NCAA singles tournament. Last season, she advanced to the round of 16, earning the first all-America honors in program history. She finishes her Baylor career with 88 career singles victories, the fourth-highest total in school history.
In first round doubles action Tuesday evening, the 21st-ranked team of Kovac and Parekh defeated 25th-ranked Brooke Ferney and Jodi Richardson of BYU, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4).
"This was a good, solid match," Luedtke said. "I was proud of the way they played, especially after the two tough losses in singles."
