San Marcos, Texas – In a match filled with comebacks and perseverance, the Texas State women's tennis team defeated McNeese State 5-2 in a Southland Conference battle on Sunday afternoon at the Bobcat Tennis Center. 

Trailing 5-2 in each of its three doubles matches, Texas State rallied in dramatic fashion to capture the doubles point and used that momentum to win four of its six singles matches in the victory. 

The first comeback came in the No. 2 doubles match when Gabriella Rojas and Bérénice Van Den Bergh rallied to defeat Kwynn Biggs and Maria Frausto by a score of 9-7. McNeese State held on to win the No. 3 doubles match as Texas State's Jessica Laing and Maria Perez dropped an 8-4 decision against Anastasio Surkova and Tea Tvrtkovic. 

In No. 1 doubles, Texas State's Melissa Hadad and Jessica Kahts were looking for some sort of miracle after trailing 5-0 early in their match against Ralitsa Pirdopska and Ilona Serchenko, who needed to win three more games for the victory. However, Hadad and Kahts won five straight games  to tie the score at 5-5. After Pirdopska and Serchenko regained a two-point lead, Texas State broke serve and scored another point with Kahts serving to tie the score once again at 7-7. With McNeese State leading 8-7, the Bobcat tandem had to overcome a deficit of 30-40 on their serve to win the point and force a tiebreaker. 

With the other players from both teams looking on, Hadad and Kahts overcame a 3-1 deficit in the tiebreaker to score six straight points and win the tiebreaker 7-3. That gave Texas State an early 1-0 lead in the dual match. 

“When we lost a doubles tiebreaker yesterday against Lamar, we talked about what we needed to do in order to win, and we came back to win this one,” said Texas State head coach Tory Plunkett. “That helped us win a couple of key tiebreakers in the singles matches. 

The first singles tiebreaker came in the first set of the No. 1 match between Kahts and Serchenko. With the scored tied 6-6, Kahts won the tiebreaker 8-6 to capture the first set. Then, she went on to easily win the second set by a score of 6-1 and win the match. 

The other tiebreaker came in the final match of the day. It was the No. 6 match between Perez and Biggs. Perez won the first set 6-4 and Biggs won the second set 6-1 to force a third-set tiebreaker to 10. Just as they had in the first two sets, both players fought back and forth and were tied at 11-11 before Perez won the final two points in the tiebreaker to capture the victory. 

“I had a long tough day in my match yesterday and coach (Plunkett) warned me to expect another long day today,” said Perez. “That helped me prepare mentally, and I was able to stay positive and prepare for the long rallies throughout the match.”

In the other singles matches, Van Den Bergh suffered a 6-2, 6-4 loss in her No. 6 match against Frausto. Laing defeated Surkova 6-4, 6-2 in the Number 4 match and Rojas won her No. 3 match over Tvrtkovic by a score of 6-4, 6-3. In the No. 2 match, Hadad dropped the first set 6-3 before falling 7-5 in a hard-fought second set. 

The dual match victory improves Texas State's record to 5-3 overall and the 2-1 against Southland Conference teams, while McNeese State fell to 3-5 overall and the Cowgirls are 0-4 in SLC play. 

Following the match, Texas State travels to California during spring break for a pair of matches at Cal State Northridge on March 15 and Cal State Fullerton on March 16. Both of those matches begin at 4:00 p.m. (CST).