Oct. 26, 2002

Cambridge, Mass. - Siena's top tennis player, senior Nikki Mayer (Latham, N.Y./Shaker), suffered her first defeat of the year at the hands of Yale's Karlyn Martin today at the ITA East Regional Tennis Tournament held at the Murr Tennis Center on the campus of Harvard University, 6-3, 6-3. Mayer was able to jump out to an early 2-0 lead in both sets but could not maintain the advantage as her opponent came back to take 5 of the next 6 games each time. The loss was her first of the year and ended her 7 match win streak.

In other action, the Siena #1 doubles team of Nikki Mayer and Denisa Hluchova fell to Brown University 8-3 today in the opening round of the ITA East Regional Championships being held at The Murr Tennis Center on the campus of Harvard University. The loss ended the Siena pair's win streak at 6 and dropped their record to 6-2 for the year.

The match was close through the first four games as neither team could hold serve. The momentum swung in favor of the Bruins in the 5th game as they held serve at love to go up 3-2. In the next game, Brown quickly built up a love 40 lead on 2 Mayer double faults and a Saint unforced error. Mayer then double faulted again and the Bruins were up 4 games to 2. In disgust, Mayer then took a ball and hit it onto the stands and was quickly penalized a point by the referee allowing the the Saint's opponents to start the 7th game with at 15 love.

In the next game, the Brown University's, Kerry Heath was also penalized when she swatted a ball into the back curtain after losing the point. But Hluchova and Mayer couldn't capitalize on the penalty, losing the game to go down 5-2. At that point, the match was pretty much over though the Saints were able to pull out 1 more game before bowing out of the tournament 8-3.

The women are now idle until next March when they make their annual spring break trip south to prepare for the, all important, spring season.