MAC Women’s Tennis Tournament | Toledo, Ohio| April 24-25
Thursday, April 24
Match 1: No.4 Buffalo 4, No. 1 Miami 3
Match 2: No.2 Northern Illinois 4, No.3 Toledo 1
Friday, April 20
Championship Match: No.4 Buffalo vs. No.2 Northern Illinois, 11:00 AM ET |
Live Stats
TOLEDO, Ohio – The Northern Illinois University women's tennis team will play for the Mid-American Conference Tournament Championship for the first time in school history after the Huskies' 4-1 semifinal win over Toledo Thursday at the UT Varsity Tennis Courts.
"It was a really good day for us," said NIU head coach
Eric Burns. "It started with the doubles. We got off to a slow start, so for us to battle back and get that point, I think it really turned a lot of momentum in the match. We had some great performances in the singles, even in the matches we didn't get to finish. All in all, it was a really good team effort today, something to really be proud of."
The Huskies trailed early in all three doubles matches and dropped a 6-1 decision at No. 2 before NIU's No. 3 pair of
Jenna Horne and
Reagan Welch came back from 3-1 down to take a 6-3 win. With the critical first point on the line, the Huskies No. 1 duo of
Maria Dzemeshkevich and
Nataly Ninova dug in. They trailed 3-1 and 4-2, came back to tie the set at 4-4 and took a 6-5 lead before Toledo's Neha Guru and Jacklynka Scholten forced the tiebreaker. The NIU duo, which was 0-7 in MAC play during the regular season, reeled off four straight points to take a 6-2 lead and claimed the point with a 7-4 tiebreaker win.
Ninova, the NIU school record holder in singles wins, took that momentum from doubles into her singles match on line four as she earned her 31st win of the season, 6-2, 6-3 over Jone Ibanez to give the Huskies a 2-0 lead.
After Audrey Moutama put the Rockets on the board with a 7-5, 6-3 win at No. 1, junior
Isabella Righi put NIU on the verge of clinching the match as she defeated UT's Annika Munson, 6-3, 6-3 on line five.
Meanwhile, freshman
Irmak Budak was battling Scholten at No. 2, winning an epic 10-8 tiebreaker to take the first set, and
Lucia Yecora tied her match at No. 3 singles after dropping the first set. Down 4-3 in the third set, Yecora took the next three games to win the third set and clinch the win for the Huskies.
"We've been good in the tight matches all year," Burns said. "I don't know exactly what our three-set win percentage is, but it's very high. That will get you a lot of wins if you can perform in those tight three-set matches. We just dug in there and wanted it today so hats off to the girls."
NIU makes its first appearance all-time in the MAC Championship match with a 22-6 overall record in 2025. Prior to this year, the Huskies only appearances in the MAC semifinals were in 2002 and 2003. NIU's last conference championship in women's tennis came as a member of the Mid-Continent Conference in 1994.
The Huskies will take on No. 4 seed Buffalo, which upset No. 1 seed Miami, 4-3, in the first semifinal match on Thursday. The championship match has been moved up to 10 a.m. (CT) to avoid potential weather in the area.
"[Friday] will be a tough match," Burns said. "Buffalo is good, obviously they beat top-seeded Miami today. We had a 4-3 match with them at our place. It's going to be a dog fight, we have to show up ready to go and ready to fight like we were today."
