The 63rd-ranked UNC Wilmington women’s tennis team squared off against Temple University in the warm sunshine Wednesday afternoon. Doubles matches kicked the event off, and the Seahawks dealt with the opposition handily, on their way to a 6-1 match victory.

Angie Sekely and Kelly Cameron won their first four games over Owl opponents and finished their set by winning 8-2. Alyssa Ritchie and Christina Lee stayed fairly even with their doubles opponents before pulling away for an 8-5 victory. The third doubles pairing, Olga Blank and Casey Dashiell, dropped their first three games, and then came back to make it close. But, the Owls took it 8-6.

The singles matches were next. “Temple started off really well in the singles matches,” said coach Jenny Garrity. “They were playing our girls really tough.” Most of the matchups started close. Lee, Cameron, Ritchie and Riley all dropped games early on due to the excellent play of the Owls, but they soon fought their way into decisive leads. “The girls stayed focused and disciplined all throughout, and that was what allowed them to overcome the Temple girls,” said Garrity.

That focus and discipline allowed Lee, Sekely, Cameron and Riley to finish in two sets. Lee won 6-1 and 6-2, Sekely notched 6-1 and 6-0 victories, Cameron defeated her opponent 6-2 and 6-0, Riley won 6-1 in both of her sets. Ritchie struggled a little more, splitting sets with her adversary. The third set wasn’t played because the event had already been decided in favor of UNCW.

The Seahawks had gotten enough victories early on to make that match irrelevant, so they played a 10-point tiebreaker, which Ritchie won. Blank fought hard in her first two sets, but struggled against in the No. 1 singles matchup, dropped both sets by 6-1 margins, leaving the final score as UNCW 6 to Temple’s 1.

From the sidelines, most of the match appeared to go the Seahawks way without much resistance tfrom the Owls, but Garrity made sure to point out that “the match was a lot tougher than the scores will indicate.” Garrity added, “Our girls had to play very well to have the results that they did.”

Garrity was pleased with the level of competition the Seahawks faced. “The girls have all done really well,” she said, “and the results we got should give us a lot of confidence heading into our match against Charleston Southern on Friday.”

With a strong showing at Charleston Southern, combined with the points earned from Wednesday’s match against Temple, the Seahawks would likely climb up in the rankings before their home stretch. The Seahawks will face off against Wake Forest, Old Dominion and Cornell on the 15th, 17th and 19th, respectively.