Miami

Sunday was a hard fought day for the Lady Blue Devils. Under the scorching noon sun we began our battle against the Miami Hurricanes. Jess and I started off slow in our doubles match and were too far down when we began our hard fought comeback. We lost 8-5. Whose match went fairly similar to ours and next to finish was Melissa and Amanda losing 8-4. Reka and Ellah pulled their match out with an 8-6 victory, but unfortunately we had already lost the doubles point. We take our ten minute break to reapply sunscreen and get pumped up for singles. We have been down 1-0 before going into singles and have been victorious in the end. We know that we are going to have to deal with more than just the sun and wind today. Miami has very obnoxious fans who really get into the matches. We are all mentally prepared for any distractions that might come our way and know that we just need to focus on what we can control in our matches. (attitude, fight, composure, etc) Well, I am not proud to say that I was the first one off the court losing 6-3, 6-3 to fellow junior competitor, Julia Cohen. Not one of my finer and entertaining matches. Though soon after Jess came off the court with a beautiful 6-1, 6-3 victory over the girl who had defeated her in the deciding match last year. Way to be mentally tough Jess!!! Next off was Melissa who played aggressive to come up with a 6-3, 6-4 win to tie the score at 2-2. Our last three matches are close with Ellah, Amanda, and Reka. Ellah had a tough match, but fought till the end, before barely losing 7-6, 6-4. Her opponent was very obnoxious and fed off the crowd for her intensity. Ok, so now we are down 2-3 with 2 matches left to go. Amanda had won a hard fought first set 6-4 after coming back from being 3-0 down. Though she lost the second set 6-0, the third set was a battle. Amanda fought till the very end but fell just short of the winners circle losing the thrid set 7-5. That had been the deciding match. Duke had lost 4-2 to Miami, but Reka was still battling it out on her court. After winning her first set 6-4, she lost her second fairly quickly 6-1. We weren't worried though because we all know that Reka will stay out on the court all day if that's what it takes for her to win. She played her heart out but was defeated 7-6 (7-5) in the deciding set tiebreaker. 5-2 Hurricanes. :( It was a very disappointing and unsatisfying day for us, but we learned from our matches and know what we need to improve to gain revenge at our next Hurricane encounter. We are headed off to play NC State on Wednesday, where we are fired up to continue our ACC matches!!! We have quite a stretch of matches to come, but we are hungry to win and are ready to put our losses behind us.

Let's go Duke!!!!!

Mal