Women's tennis comes up short against Lady Griz

RESULTS: vs. Montana

GREELEY, Colo. -- Northern Colorado's women's tennis team took Montana to the brink in nearly every one of its matches with the Lady Griz on Saturday, March 28, at Work Out West.

Montana came out on top in a majority of the contests, though, including winning two of the doubles matches, to earn a 4-3 Big Sky Conference victory against the Bears.

Northern Colorado's Tabatha Knop and Manuela Santos (No. 1 doubles) were victorious in their match against Montana's Liz Walker and Martyna Nowak, but Jodi Ciarvella and Tiffany Knop (No. 2), and Jennifer Whateley and Jill Kappel (No. 3) were unable to follow suit.

"Today's loss was very dissappointing and unfortunate," Bears coach Brenda Vlasak said. "We fought so hard in singles but were not able to pull out the win in the end. Once again, today's match proved how important and crucial the doubles point is."

Northern Colorado earned all it's match points in singles, where Santos (No. 2), Tiffany Knop (No. 3) and Kappel (No. 4) all came out on top.

Santos took down Rebecca Bran, 7-6, 7-6; Tiffany Knop defeated Amanda Bran, 6-1, 6-1; and Kappel, a true freshman, moved to 11-5 in singles play this season with a 2-6, 6-0, 6-1 win against Nowak.

"We need to move on from this loss and redeem ourselves against MSU on Friday," Vlasak said.