Throughout the match, assistant coach Jennifer Meredith complimented Miranda Ramirez on her hands and feet. At the net, fast reflexes helped Ramirez position her racket and along the baseline, she took quick steps to the ball.

Ramirez’s doubles match ended early after her teammates — Sofya Golubovskaya and Sonya Treshcheva — secured the Orange’s doubles point. But almost two hours later, Ramirez won her singles match to secure the match win for SU. Syracuse (8-2, 3-1 Atlantic Coast) defeated Louisville (8-4, 0-3) in a 4-3 win at Drumlins Country Club. While the final score finished close, the Orange secured victory early, after winning the first four matches of the day.

After a tough 7-5 first singles set win against Andrea Di Palma, Ramirez breezed through the second set to win 7-5, 6-1.

“I think that after winning the first set I had kind of broken her will a little bit,” Ramirez said. “I think it’s easy to kind of just run away with it.”

In the second set, with Ramirez up 3-1, Di Palma returned a shot from the middle of the baseline. The ball hit the tape at the top of the net, but instead of bouncing over to Ramirez’s side, it ricocheted back to give Ramirez a 40-30 lead. Di Palma slowly retrieved the ball. Throughout her walk to the net, Di Palma made no sound, but her mouth moved in silent yells as she motioned her right hand in frustration.

On the next shot, Ramirez hit a forehand shot down the line to the deuce side of the court. While Di Palma slammed her racket against the tarp, Ramirez quickly jogged over to the bench, just two games away from an individual and team match win.

Once the two players returned to the court, Di Palma made another error, this time hitting a return long. After the missed shot, the No. 2 Louisville player hit a ball against the tarp behind her that traveled two courts over into Polina Kozyreva’s ongoing match.

“Importo!” the Argentinian yelled at herself in Spanish after another missed shot.

Louisville’s frustrations were prominent in other courts as well. In No. 1 singles, after losing to Guzal Yusupova 6-0 in the first set, Cardinal Raven Neely cursed under her breath.

On court six, SU’s Kim Hansen used a booming forehand and thundering serve to defeat Dina Chaika 6-1, 6-1. When the six-foot tall Hansen served, Chaika stood five to 10 feet behind the baseline, at the block S logo a foot away from the back tarp.

“I think I work more on my first serve and that paid off,” Hansen said. “I felt like I was in control the whole time, I played really smart and hit to her backhand a lot.”

Shots to the opponent’s backhands were a common trend for the Orange on Sunday. On a point in the 11th game of the first set, with the games knotted at five, Ramirez hit three consecutive balls to Di Palma’s backhand. On the last shot, Di Palma reached out, tapping a weak ball just over the net. Ramirez used her “quick feet,” as coach Meredith said, to approach the ball and drill a forehand crosscourt winner.

Hopping back-and-forth before the coin toss for her doubles match, Ramirez showed the energy head coach Younes Limam has demanded all week in practice, after his team lost its first two matches of the season, falling to Columbia and Duke last weekend.

“We talked a lot about how we needed to come out swinging hard and come up with a lot of energy,” Limam said. “We have to keep that energy going.”

Published on March 1, 2020 at 4:49 pm

Contact Thomas: tgshults@syr.edu | @ThomasShults_