Tennis wins in home tournament

By Marc Marin

All season NIU women’s tennis coach Laura Scott maintained her team had the ability to sweep its home tournament.

Scott’s thoughts seemed prophetic after the dust settled on this past weekend’s Huskie Fall Invitational.

The Huskies swept all 19 singles matches and eight doubles matches against Bradley and Wisconsin-Milwaukee, justifying Scott’s confidence in them.

Sophomore Karrie Tyioran made perhaps the strongest statement of the weekend as she didn’t lose a game in her three matches at No. 3 singles.

“I was happy with how I played,” Tyioran said. “We were really hoping to dominate this weekend and we did. This will give us some confidence as a team. Getting some wins under our belts will be real important later on when we play some better teams.”

Making her first appearance as a Huskie, junior transfer from Murray State Erica Heshelman lost only two games in three singles matches.

“Erica really played well in her first match as a Huskie,” Scott said. “In fact, everybody played well throughout the weekend. We started strong and finished strong. That was a big key to our success.”

Strong performances weren’t limited to singles for the Huskies, as the tandem of Tyioran and junior Tanja Sukovic posted a 3-0 mark.

With their mission accomplished, the Huskies can now look forward to this weekend, when they will travel to Macomb to participate in the Western Illinois Invitational.

“We really wanted to play well in our invite and we did that,” Scott said. “I hope we can continue to play this well next weekend at Western Michigan.”