The Quinnipiac women’s tennis team’s conference championship season came to an end Friday afternoon, falling 4-0  to the No. 2 Texas A&M Aggies in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

The Bobcats faced the Aggies on their home courts — the Mitchell Tennis Center in College Station, Texas — at 2 p.m. Just a little over two hours later, the Bobcats were sent home with a humbling defeat.

Texas A&M established its dominance over Quinnipiac fairly quickly. Its doubles team snatched the first point from the Bobcats, as the graduate duo of Salma Ewing and Jayci Goldsmith swept Quinnipiac senior Alessia Truden and graduate student Kamilla Nella 6-0. Quinnipiac’s senior and freshman team of Jordan Bradley and Nikole Lisovyy put up a little more of a fight, but were no match for the Aggies’ freshman Mia Kupres and sophomore Mary Stoiana, losing 6-2.  

Since the Aggies took the doubles point in the first two matches, the third match between Texas A&M sophomores Gianna Pielet and Jeanette Mireles and Quinnipiac’s freshman Vera Sekerina and senior Andie Williams was stopped by default at 4-4 in the set.

Prior to today, Quinnipiac won the last nine matches in a row, being 15-8 overall and 8-0 in the MAAC. However, not even this stellar season performance could prepare the Bobcats for the brutal defeat they suffered at the hands of the Aggies.

Out of the 83 total games played during the singles matches, Quinnipiac managed to win only 13, which made up only 16%. Two of the sets were lost to a bagel (6-0), four were lost to breadsticks (6-1).

Despite that bitter statistic, Quinnipiac won 19 gems total today, the most it ever has in their NCAA appearance ever before.

Sekerina, who won the MAAC championship-clinching match and performed well throughout the season, fell at the hands of Goldsmith, 6-0, 6-1, as the first Bobcat to go down.

Following in her somber footsteps, Truden and senior Claire Koscielski finished their matches simultaneously. Truden fell to Ewing in two breadsticks, while Koscielski lost to Stoiana 6-1, 6-0.

Therefore, Nella, Bradley and Lisovyy did not finish their matches by default, and perhaps that was a blessing in disguise (otherwise the Bobcats would’ve returned home with a crushing 7-0 defeat). All three of them lost the first set and were a gem or two away from losing the entire match.

The final scores in tennis matches don’t always reflect the quality of one’s gameplay. However, today that rule was disproved by the Bobcats. The Aggies’ gameplay reflected their No. 2 rank and combined with the Bobcat’s easy mistakes, they got most of the matches gifted to them. 

The Bobcats once again lost 4-0 in the first round, just as they did in every previous NCAA appearance, unable to break their curse.

Despite that, Quinnipiac looks forward to entering the 2023-24 season as the back-to-back MAAC champion. While the roster will lose Nella, one of the team captains, and the future of four seniors is up in the air, the Bobcats will look to reload, as they have announced the signing of five new players for next season.