Florida women’s tennis season ends with NCAA Tournament loss
The No. 15 Florida women’s tennis program saw its 2024 campaign come to a close on Sunday coming up on the short end of a second-round battle with the No. 22 Miami Hurricanes in the NCAA Tournament.
It was a narrow upset at the Alfred A. Ring Tennis Complex in Gainesville, where the ‘Canes came back from an early deficit to earn the 4-3 event victory and move on to the next round. It all came down to a final match on court four as Alicia Dudeney was unable to fend off Audrey Boch-Collins for the final point.
Doubles pair Dudeney and Malwina Rowinska earned the opening point after going neck-to-neck the whole way through their match. Carly Briggs earned Florida’s first singles point while her teammate Qavia Lopez came up short in her match; Rachel Gailis successive singles loss evened things up at two apiece.
Sara Dahlstrom got the Gators back in the lead, 3-2, but from there Miami made their comeback. Bente Spee faltered before the aforementioned final match decided the ultimate outcome.
“Some years it’s easy to know exactly what to say, and then you have some years you really love the team and the way they worked together all year and how they invested, like this team, head coach Roland Thornqvist said after the loss.
“They came every morning, they grinded, worked and came a long way. To be honest we knew we had things that we had to get better at as the year progressed and I felt like we kept improving, but at the end it came down to a few little things and Miami was just ruthless at the end and you have to credit them in how they competed. We gave it everything we had to the very, very, very last point.”
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