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The Longwood Women’s tennis team traveled to Charlottesville for a pair of dual matches against the Marshall Thundering Herd and the seventh-ranked Virginia Cavaliers. Both Virginia and Marshall took down the Lancers, with Marshall playing to clinch at 4-0 while Virginia won 7-0 as the two sides played to completion.

The Lancers returned sophomores Zoe Barton, Nina Hederich, Alexandra Hincu, Briee Jolliff, junior Maria Saez and senior Emma Nurgazieva, and freshmen, Wiktoria Czerny and Karina Rizvanova made their collegiate debuts for Longwood.

“The ladies played well against two very strong teams today,” said first year Director of Tennis Adam Jackson. “They showed a lot of poise and grit to be such a young team. We are excited for how these matches have prepared us for the ones to come.”

In doubles against the Thundering Herd, the Marshall duo of Emma Vanderheyden and Liz Stefancic downed Saez and Hederich by a score of 6-3, while the Virginia tandem of Emma Navarro and Amber O’Dell pulled away for a 6-0 win. The pairing of Nurgazieva and Rizvanova fell to Thundering Herd pairing of Madi Ballow and Aisling McGrane and the Cavalier duo of Elaine Chervinsky and Natasha Subhash. Hincu and Czerny battled to a 4-4 tie in their first doubles match, but it didn’t finish as Marshall clinched the doubles point. Against Virginia, the sophomore pairing of Barton and Jolliff dropped their contest 6-1.

In singles, the young squad battled against Marshall in the first bout of the day. Saez and Hederich, at number two and number five singles, dropped their matches 6-3, 6-1 respectively against Stefancic and Gabrielle Clairotte. Nurgazieva battled back in a tight second set while Rezvanova brought her match to a third set against the Thundering Herd, but the matches didn’t finish as Marshall clinched the win.

The seventh-ranked Cavaliers flexed their muscle, with Virginia boasting a pair of players ranked in the top 100.

The Longwood women head back on the road to Saint Francis University in two weeks on Saturday, Jan. 29.