LOUISVILLE, Ky. – With identical 5-4 wins Saturday morning over Bellarmine University, the Northern Kentucky University men's and women's tennis teams now know their seeds for the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tennis Championships to be held at the Dwight Davis Tennis Center on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
The NKU men's team (15-7, 7-2 GLVC), who clinched the 3rd-seed with Saturday's win, trailed the Knights (6-9, 4-4 GLVC) early on as Bellarmine won the top two doubles flights by the same 8-6 score. NKU's lone doubles point came when Felipe Rossetti and Jason Kramer defeated Sathi Reddy and Todd Atcher 8-3.
The Norse, who are currently the eighth-ranked team in the Midwest Region, then turned on the jets and flew past the Knights by winning four singles points.
Ignacio Ortiz (9-7) won the first set 7-6 courtesy of a 7-1 tiebreaker over Nathan Matthews winning a back-and-forth second set 6-4. Rossetti, playing in his fourth singles match of the season, also needed a tiebreaker in the first set on the way to defeating Tyler Worley 7-6 (7-5), 6-0.
Will Knoll upped his team-best individual record to 14-7 on the season with a 6-1, 6-2 demolishing of Reddy.
Ricardo Weaver stayed close to Knoll for the team-best individual honors with a three-set victory over Paul Clark. Weaver dropped the first set 6-4, but take the final two sets by a 6-3 margin each to give the Norse the team victory.
NKU will know who they will be facing in the GLVC Championships after Sunday as the University of Indianapolis and Bellarmine will face off in the last match of the GLVC regular season.
In women's action, NKU took a 2-1 lead after the doubles play on their way to winning the see-saw affair 5-4. The Norse punched their ticket to a second-place finish in the GLVC regular season and will face Southern Indiana in next week's tournament. USI, who was tied for seventh, was awarded the seventh seed by virtue of a 6-3 win over Lewis University on March 28.
Stephanie Isaacs and Jillian Sturgeon slipped past Rebecca Porter and Emily Roebker 8-4 in the first doubles flight while Jenny Hand and Ivana Misic cruised past Keyly Knechtel and Lauren Cotton 8-2.
The nip and tuck team match would see NKU (17-6, 9-1 GLVC) win flights three, five, and six in singles action to take the match. The Norse, who are the 34th-ranked team in the country according to the Intercollegiate Tennis Association and the fourth best team in the Midwest Region, now stake claim to a five-match GLVC winning streak.
Michelle Schirmann, who was named the GLVC Women's Tennis Player of the Week on Tuesday, dominated Elizabeth Bohnert 6-2, 6-1 to improve her record to 13-9 on the season.
Sturgeon (18-5) carbon-copied Schirmann's results as she defeated Knechtel 6-2, 6-1. Maggie Koetter (21-2) improved on her team-best individual record by quickly knocking out Cotton 6-0, 6-1.
Bellarmine (12-5, 6-3 GLVC) will now have to defeat Indianapolis on Sunday to find out where they will sit on the GLVC bracket.
Both NKU teams will now have a couple days off before heading to St. Louis in search of the GLVC Championship.
