The Alabama women’s tennis team fell to the Georgia Bulldogs 4-0 Sunday in the team’s final regular season match of the year at the Roberta Alison Baumgardner Indoor Tennis Facility.
With the loss, the Crimson Tide finished the regular season with an 18-4 overall record, 10-3 in Southeastern Conference play.
Head coach Jenny Mainz said Alabama has fought until the very end all season and it continued to do so against Georgia.
“We have competed well all year and all season,” Mainz said. “I thought we competed well today against Georgia. Credit to them for the win.”
Alabama wasn’t able to win any of the three doubles matches and trailed Georgia 1-0 early.
Heading into the singles matches, Alabama needed to win four of the six matches to win the overall team match against the No. 4 Bulldogs.
The Tide came out early in the singles matches as sophomore Emily Zabor, freshmen Maya Jansen and Natalia Maynetto all won their first set. Zabor won her first set 6-3, Jansen won 6-4 and Maynetto won 6-3.
Despite the early push in the singles matches, the Tide wasn’t able to win any Georgia went on to win 4-0.
Mainz said the team needed to step up and take control of the match early if it wanted to win.
“At the end of the day, when it counted the most, they stepped up and took it from us,” Mainz said. “Today was a day we were going to have establish ourselves early and step up and take it from them, and we didn’t do that.”
Senior Alexa Guarachi said the team plans on using the loss as momentum headed into the Southeastern Conference Tournament.
“We can use this as motivation,” Guarachi said. “They came after us and we need to come after them, we just need to go out there next time with the mentality that we’re going to compete with every point.”
Despite the loss, Mainz said there is a lot the Tide can take away from this match heading into the postseason.
“This is another lesson learned for us and a lot for us to learn,” Mainz said. “We have to start fast and finish strong, we are playing together and playing hard but we have to believe and we will.”
Mainz said the team played hard throughout the whole match and competed well with one of the best teams in the country.
“I think we gave a great effort. I’m very proud of this team,” Mainz said. “I think we did some things really well and I can’t be more proud the way we represented The University of Alabama.”
