Pepperdine Waves tennis player Ashley Lahey captured her second tournament championship in two events last weekend. And the 2018 NCCA Singles Championship runner-up wasn’t the lone Wave to win a title. Lahey came into the tournament just one week after winning the Oracle/ITA Masters on Sept. 29.
Lahey, a senior, and freshman Lisa Zaar finished atop their respective brackets on Oct. 6 at the three-day Women’s Collegiate Invitational at Ralph-Straus Tennis Center on Pepperdine’s campus.
Lahey beat her teammate, graduate student Jessica Failla, 7-6(2), 6-1, in the Orange Draw Finals, and Zaar downed North Carolina’s Anika Yarlagadda 7-6(5), 3-6, 10-8, in the Blue Draw Finals.
Lahey’s road to the championship included a first-round victory over Alexandra Sanford of North Carolina by a score of 6-4, 6-3. She defeated Georgia’s Vivian Wolff, 6-4, 6-1, on the second day of the championship. Lahey beat San Diego’s Solymar Colling, 6-3, 6-2, a day before winning the title.
Failla beat Chiara Lommer of Michigan 6-1, 6-0 on the championship’s opening day and Stanford’s Michaela Gordon 6-2, 6-3 the next day. The Wave defeated Georgia’s Marta Gonzalez 6-0, 7-5 in the third round.
Lahey and Failla’s teammate sophomore Anastasia Iamachkine advanced to the second round but was beaten by Georgia’s Marta Gonzalez 6-4, 6-4.
Lahey became the first Pepperdine player ever to win the five-year-old Oracle/ITA Masters by defeating UCLA’s Jada Hart, 6-3, 6-0.
Other teams take home wins
Also on Oct. 5, the Pepperdine men’s water polo team, ranked seventh in the nation, won two contests in the Gary Troyer Tournament in Claremont, and the university’s women’s soccer team snagged its first win in the West Coast Conference. The Pepperdine women’s volleyball team also garnered a win.
The water polo squad beat 18th-ranked Pomona-Pitzer, 13-7, and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, 19-10. Sophomore attacker Balazs Kosa led the Waves with 10 goals in both matches. Senior attacker Marko Asic scored nine goals in the games and freshman utility Kaden Kaneko had three goals.
Additionally, freshman goalkeeper Kent Emden had 11 saves in Pepperdine’s win over Pomona-Pitzer, and sophomore Kyle McKenney had 11 saves in Pepperdine’s second win.
Sophomore defender Trinity Watson and senior forward Hailey Stenburg both scored goals in the women’s soccer team’s 2-1 home win over Portland, a WCC foe. Freshman goalkeeper Kinsey Ehmann had five saves in the win, including two stopped penalty kicks. The victory gave Pepperdine a 5-0-1 all-time record against Portland.
Senior outside hitter Hannah Frohling had 16 kills, junior outside hitter Shannon Scully had 10 kills and senior middle blocker Tarah Wylie had 10 kills in the women’s volleyball team’s win over WCC opponent Gonzaga, 3-0, at Firestone Fieldhouse.
