Women's tennis completes June Stewart Invitational

Although it was just a preseason event, the IU women’s tennis team was very pleased with how it performed at the June Stewart Invitational in Nashville, Tenn.

Vanderbilt was host to the tournament, which was made up of teams that were each in the top 50 of last year’s NCAA Division I rankings.

The invitational took place from Friday to Sunday.

On the first day, IU won two singles matches and one doubles match. The doubles team was comprised of freshman Paula Gutierrez and senior Gabrielle Rubenstein, who won by a score of 8-0.

Senior Sophie Garre beat Vanderbilt’s nationally ranked Georgina Sellyn in three sets in singles play.

On the second day, senior Kayla Fujimoto, junior Carolyn Chupa, junior Katie Klyczek and freshman Kim Schmider all won their singles matches.

In their doubles matches, the Hoosiers only lost eight games between the four competitions.

On Sunday, IU won six of its seven singles matchups. Five of the victories came in straight sets.

IU Coach Lin Loring said he was very pleased with his team’s play.

“Even the matches that we lost we were still working on the things we’ve been doing in practice,” he said. “I thought everybody did a good job sticking to the game plan. All in all, it was a good tournament for us.”

One of the main focuses for Loring was to pair up different players and find different doubles team pairings.

“We stuck with the top three and I thought they played well,” Loring said. “We had two new combinations since the first tournament.”

The Hoosiers have three weeks until their next preseason event. They will be going to Michigan for the end of the fall season’s tournaments.

Loring said there are still some goals the team can work toward.

“We have to work on a lot of the individual stuff for each player. We’ll mainly be working on singles stroke mechanics with each player.”

Follow reporter Greg Gottfried on Twitter @gott31.