BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU women’s tennis team (3-1) will play hosts at the LSU Tennis Complex twice over the next two days. On Sunday, the women’s tennis team will compete alongside the men’s team as both programs host Rice at noon CT. The Tigers will then return to action on Monday night when they host the Tulane Green Waves at 5 p.m. CT.
Attendance to all LSU matches at the LSU Tennis Complex is free of charge. Attendees will be required to comply with the clear-bag policy held by the university. The first 100 students to attend Sunday’s match against Rice will receive a free slice of pizza on a first come, first served basis.
Rice (Feb. 4)
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Tulane (Feb. 5)
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Notes on Rice
Sunday’s match against Rice will see both the men and women’s programs compete at the same time as the men play on the north courts while the women compete on the south courts. This will mark the first time since 2020 against Tulane that both LSU tennis programs compete at home at the same time.
In the series history, LSU boasts an 11-9 record against the Owls. The last time the two teams met in 2022, Rice earned a 4-0 win over a five-player LSU team on their home court.
The Owls enter the match with a 1-3 record, picking up their first win of the season on Friday night as they defeated UL-Lafayette by a score of 4-0 in Lafayette. Their three losses include a 4-2 loss to Harvard in their season opener, 4-1 defeat against TCU and a narrow 4-3 loss to Northwestern at ITA Kickoff Weekend.
Notes on Tulane
Monday night’s match will be the 46th time that the Tigers and Green Waves meet in dual competition, with LSU holding a 40-5 lead in the series, including the last five straight. When the teams met last season in New Orleans, the Tigers grabbed a 5-2 win.
The Green Waves are 3-0 to start the dual season and will compete in their first road match of the year against LSU. Tulane defeated McNeese State by a score of 5-2 in their season opener, then grabbed a 7-0 sweep against Southern before beating Northwestern State, 4-3, last Sunday.
Last Time Out
The Tigers return to the LSU Tennis Complex after a trip out west to Malibu, California last weekend for ITA Kickoff Weekend. In Pepperdine’s regional, the Tigers defeated Loyola Marymount by a score of 4-0. Doubles victories from the pair of Maya Tahan and Kenna Erickson at the No. 3 spot and Kinaa Graham and Anita Sahdiieva at the top court secured the doubles point for the Tigers. In singles, Aran Teixidó Garcia, Tahan and Sahdiieva earned straight set wins to clinch the match for the Tigers.
LSU then faced No. 6 Pepperdine on Saturday afternoon. The Waves narrowly edged the doubles point before going on to win the match, 4-0, and advance to the ITA National Indoor Championships.
Tiger Tidbits
LSU has posted a cumulative 12-6 record in singles and 8-2 doubles record through four dual matches this spring, with the two doubles losses coming last Saturday against No. 6 Pepperdine. Kinaa Graham and Anita Sahdiieva sit at 3-1 at the No. 1 doubles spot, with their only defeat coming against the No. 4-ranked duo of Savannah Broadus and Janice Tjen of Pepperdine. That 3-1 record is also shared by Florentine Dekkers and Aran Teixidó Garcia, who have played at the No. 2 spot in doubles in all four matches thus far.
Teixidó Garcia and Sahdiieva lead the team in singles thus far this dual season with their 3-0 records at the No. 3 & 4 courts. Dekkers also boasts an undefeated dual singles record of 2-0 playing at the No. 2 spot.
The Tigers have one player ranked by the ITA in their singles rankings. Graham checked in at No. 56 in the latest singles rankings after her 12-5 record in ITA tournaments in the fall. The singles and doubles rankings will update for the first time in 2024 on Wednesday, February 7.
Squad Outlook
The 2024 LSU women’s tennis team features 11 athletes, nine of which are newcomers to Baton Rouge, on a roster that boasts a balance of experience and youth. Kylie Collins, a senior in her second year as a Tiger, and Caroline Arnold, a sophomore, are the two returners to the squad.
Graduate students Maya Tahan, a former four-year starter at the University of Miami, and Aran Teixidó Garcia, a former four-year starter at the University of Memphis, bring experience to the squad as upperclassmen. Juniors Florentine Dekkers, a player who played at the top courts for two seasons at Kansas State, Gaby Rivera, who spent the 2023 season in Miami alongside Tahan, and Anita Sahdiieva, a two-year starter at Baylor, join the fold with experience at the college level and will look to take their games to the next level. Four freshmen round out the squad, with Kenna Erickson, Kinaa Graham, Emma Grant and Carina Holguin competing in their first season of collegiate tennis.
Of the 11 players, six hail from the United States while five come from abroad. Erickson, Graham and Holguin come from the state of Texas, Arnold and Grant from Metairie and Gretna, Louisiana respectively, and Collins coming the way from Savannah, Georgia. Internationally, four of the five players come from Europe. Dekkers comes from the Netherlands, Sahdiieva from Ukraine, Tahan from Israel and Garcia from Spain. Rivera, the remaining international, hails from Guatemala.
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