Home|Sports|Clarke, Mackey close regular season with winsSports
Simba FrenchSend an emailApril 19, 2023 269 1 minute readFacebookTwitterLinkedInShare via Email
Sydney Clarke and Elana Mackey closed out their collegiate tennis regular season with wins, and Clarke will prepare for the Conference-USA (C-USA) Championships that is set to get underway on Thursday.
Clarke and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Blazers head into the 2023 C-USA Tennis Championships after ending the regular season with a 6-1 victory over the Middle Tennessee State University Blue Raiders on Saturday. The Blazers finished the season with a 9-9 win/loss overall record and a 2-2 C-USA record.
Mackey and the Mars Hill University Lions finished the season at 8-12 with their final victory being a 4-3 triumph over the Coker University Cobras on Monday. The Lions are out of playoff contention in the South Atlantic Conference (SAC).
For the Blazers, Clarke and doubles partner Maggie White teamed up to help the team win the doubles point. They took care of the Blue Raiders’ Love-Star Alexis and Muskan Gupta, 6-4. With that win, the Blazers duo improved to 12-6 on the season.
The Bahamian helped the Blazers in the singles portion of the dual matchup, playing in the second singles spot. The match went the distance and ended with Clarke winning. She lost the first set 7-6 before bouncing back to win the second set, 6-4. She came out on top in the third set tiebreak, 10-7.
The Blue Raiders’ only point came in singles when Love-Star took down the Blazers’ Adela Wasserbauerova.
The Blazers ended the season on a two-game winning streak. Clarke has a 14-14 overall record in singles play.
The win puts the Blazers at ninth in the C-USA standings. They will play the eighth-place University of Texas at San Antonio Roadrunners on Thursday at noon at the Waranch Tennis Complex in Denton, Texas.
The win on Monday broke a seven-game losing streak for Mackey and the Lions.
Mackey and her doubles partner Amanda Kadiri had a dominant match against the Cobras’ Jessica Binzari and Angelina Krieg. They won 6-0, but the Lions lost the doubles point.
In the singles section, Mackey played in the number one slot. She lost 6-4 and 6-1 to Binzari.
Mackey sported a 13-5 record in singles. She and doubles partner Kadiri finished the season with a 10-7 record playing together.