The Baylor women’s tennis team kicks off the fall season with a three-day event in Waco Friday through Sunday with the H-E-B Invitational. Eight teams, including Baylor, will participate in tournament that includes singles and doubles draws.
Friday and Sunday’s matches will be on campus at the Hurd Tennis Center while Saturday’s matches will be held off campus at the Waco Regional Tennis Center at 900 Lake Shore Drive. Friday and Saturday match play is set to begin at 9 a.m. and Sunday action begins at 10 a.m.
The Bears will be very familiar with each other as all six roster spots are returnees from last year’s squad that achieved a final ranking of No. 25 in the nation and upset No. 18 Kansas in the Big 12 Championship Tournament to reach the semifinals. Once BU reached the NCAA Tournament, it found itself down 3-0 to North Carolina State before storming back to reach the second round.
Seventeenth-year head coach Joey Scrivano said that the 2018-19 squad is ready for the season and that its chemistry is a driving point headed into the weekend’s fall opener.
“This team’s worked incredibly hard in the offseason to be physically, mentally and emotionally prepared for the fall, and with our first tournament around the corner they are really excited for it,” said Scrivano. “This group is really a team that’s connected. They’re all an extension of each other; they have a lot of respect for each other. It’s a really positive locker room. That takes a lot of work and they’ve invested in each other, and it’s a great nucleus.”
A four-plus month offseason had the Bears looking at the mirror and working to improve. As a program, Baylor is a mainstay in the NCAA Tournament (trips in 15 of Scrivano’s 16 seasons at the helm) and has 19 combined Big 12 championships between the regular season and tournament.
“Any time you’re going into a new season, you have to look back at last year’s season and figure out why you won and why you lost. This team has done a great job of doing an autoposy on last season,” said Scrivano. “Now, that we really have a handle of what we need to work on, we’re strong. Ultimately, we’re just trying to create an environment where our players really learn and grow. It’s going to be important for us in the first tournament that we see improvement, and that the players know what they need to work on.”
All six players are back, but it’s a relatively young squad with two juniors and four sophomores. Jessica Hinojosa and Angelina Shakhraichuk have the most career matches under their belts with two years of prior competition while Livia Kraus, Katelyn Parker, Kristina Sorokolet and Dominka Sujova enter their second year of play.
Specifically to fall competition, Hinojosa has the most career singles wins at 12-4 while Kraus and Shakhraichuk are each 7-2 all-time. Hinojosa and Kraus also each have five career doubles wins in fall competition.
Players from Kansas, LSU, North Texas, Sam Houston State, Texas, Tyler Junior College and UTSA will participate in the H-E-B Invitational.
