Women's tennis post pair of second-place ?nishes

Work hard, stay positive and keep fighting.

That was the theme for the North Carolina women’s tennis team as it traveled to Las Vegas this weekend for the Freeman Memorial Championship to compete against some of the top squads in the nation.

No. 8 UNC was joined by four other top-10 programs — top-ranked Florida, No. 2 UCLA, No. 4 USC and No. 5 Stanford — as well as Oregon and the host, UNLV.

Despite the talented field, UNC posted successful results in both the singles and doubles tournaments.

Freshmen Ashley Dai and Whitney Kay finished second in the doubles tournament, defeating teams from Stanford and USC, both by an 8-2 margin. They fell to a Trojan duo 8-4 in the championship round.

Though the tandem came up just short of winning the championship, Kay said they feel good about their play in the tournament.

“We tried to stay positive and keep fighting throughout the matches even if it gets tough sometimes,” Kay said. “I felt like we did a really good job of competing — that’s definitely a big thing.”

Coach Brian Kalbas said the doubles pair played hard and performed well.

“For them as freshmen to get to the finals, I was really pleased with their performance,” Kalbas said. “They were working really hard together and are getting a lot better, so we are very pleased with how they’re doing — it was a very good tournament for them.”

The other standout performance of the weekend came from senior Gina Suarez-Malaguti, who finished second in the singles tournament.

No. 11 Suarez-Malaguti defeated Kaitlyn Christian of USC in the round of 16 and teammate Tessa Lyons in the quarterfinal round.

Then, in the semifinal, the senior downed No. 14 Danielle Lao of USC in straight sets after falling behind 3-0 early in the second set.

“I wasn’t really expecting that much from myself in this tournament, but I proved myself wrong, and it was very encouraging after being down in the second set 3-0 to be able to come back and not give up.”

Suarez-Malaguti’s run would end in the championship match, however, as she fell to USC’s No. 17 Sabrina Santamaria in straight sets.

Despite falling short of the winning the championship, Suarez-Malaguti said she was happy with how she performed and how the team looked in the tournament.

“I’m very excited with how things are looking so far,” she said. “I’m very excited for the team, especially the freshmen in team doubles. They showed a lot of dedication and work and fight.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.