Online Exclusive: Sports Briefs

Women's tennis plays final fall tournament
A few weeks ago head coach Rob Oertel told his women's tennis team that if they did well this fall he would take them to the ITA Southeast Regional at the end of the season. Last weekend coach Oertel made good on his word and took seniors Svetlana Pimenova and Alexandra Sitnikova to the based Winston-Salem event. Pimenova went up against Wake Forest's Christian Tara in the first round. After losing the first set 6-2, she bounced back to win the second 4-6. Pimenova could not close out the match and fell in the third set 6-4.

Sitnikova had better success in her first round match. She defeated Davidson's Teresa Wang in the singles qualifier bracket, 6-4, 7-6 (6). She would not go any further than that as she lost 6-1, 6-1 to Jennifer Meredith of the University of Tennessee.

The two Colonels paired up in couples play but could not get past OVC foe Tennessee Tech's Tatiana Denezhikina and Alex Krutkina. The two lost 9-7.

With the men's and women's fall seasons over, coach Oertel will now start to focus on the spring season and recruiting. The Colonels will be back in action in late-January.


Ladies' golf finishes seventh at final fall event
The ladies golf team continued its top-ten play this past week with a seventh place finish at the Troy University Trojan Invitational. The Colonels have now finished in the top-ten in four of the five tournaments they've played in this fall.

After the first round three Colonels were tied at 14th after Linda Hogberg, Gabrielle Andersson and Kara Fant all shot a 78. Eastern sat at 6th shooting 316.

The second and final round had Andersson shooting another 78 and finishing tied for 13th. Hogberg managed to take one stroke off her game shooting a 77 and placing 12. Fant shot an 82.

The team was four strokes higher than round one at 320, and took seventh.

OVC foe Jacksonville State finished first, while host Troy took third place honors.

The golfing Colonels will be back in action in February.


Men's golf finishes tied for 3rd
In a field of 16 teams, including teams like Florida and TCU, the Colonels took third place, shooting 73-over-par.

After one round at the Colombia Invitational, Eastern was tied for first with a first round total of 301.

Freshman Brian Fister led all Colonels, and sit at fifth overall at 2-over. During the second day of the tournament, Eastern (+45) dropped into third behind TCU (+35) and Florida (+41). Fister shot 10-over on the day to drop to 18th while Shawn McConnell shot 6-over to lead Eastern at 10-over.

Going into the third and final round, Eastern was ten strokes off the lead, which proved too big a deficit to overcome. They shot a 312 to fall 21 strokes off TCU's lead.

The Horned Frogs finished first, nine strokes better that the second place Florida Gators. Eastern would finish tied for third with St. Johns.

Eastern is off the links until next semester.