BATON ROUGE, La. – The conference season begins this weekend for the Alcorn State University men's and women's tennis programs when they compete in the first of two SWAC Round-Ups, hosted by Southern University.
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The action begins Friday at 9 a.m. when Alcorn takes on Mississippi Valley State. On Saturday, the women's team will take on Southern at 9 a.m., and both the men and women will wrap it up Sunday at 1 p.m. against Alabama A&M.
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"I'm very excited for our first SWAC matches. The league is very competitive this year and we know we have to be at our best," said Alcorn head coach
Barbara Oliveira. "We're still not at full strength for either the men's or women's teams in terms of injuries, but we still expect to have positive results. Our teams have improved since the beginning of the year and we are looking forward to these matches."
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The Lady Braves will look to carry momentum into the weekend after defeating Delta State 4-2. Alcorn won the doubles point, and then registered singles victories by junior
Anastasia Vaganova, freshman
Stefany Grlj and junior
Veronika Pytlikova.
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The Lady Braves reached the finals of the SWAC Championships last year, and four of the six student-athletes from that roster are expected to play this weekend.
Bianca Birkenstock and
Klavdija Bukovec are in their senior seasons.
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The men have played a grueling schedule to date, but have turned in some strong individual performances. Most notably, sophomore
Johnatan Parat has victories at No. 2 singles over UL-Lafayette and New Orleans.
Nuno Rocha is the lone senior on the youthful Braves squad.
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In the regular season last year, both the Alcorn men and women defeated MVSU and AAMU. The women fell to the Jaguars 4-2, but then came back to knock them out of the SWAC Championships 4-2 in the quarterfinals.
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#FearTheBrave
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