Sophomore Olga Bredikhina strikes the ball during the Terps’ 4-3 win against Syracuse on April 6, 2014.
The Terrapins tennis season did not end the way the team wanted. After entering the ACC tournament with plenty of momentum from four wins in six matches, the Terps suffered a 4-1 loss to Wake Forest in the first round.
But after the Terps followed a 4-0 start with a stretch of one win in 11 matches, the loss to the Demon Deacons served as a fitting end to an up-and-down year for a young team in its last season in the ACC.
“I feel like we were improving until the end, and that was important,” sophomore Nataliya Bredikhina said. “This loss was coming right after some good victories. We were improving, we were believing in ourselves.”
Even before their fast start, the Terps entered the year with optimism coming off a 6-16 campaign in 2013. Senior Welma Luus — who missed last season with a torn labrum — returned for her junior season of eligibility, coach Daria Panova was entering her second season and the Terps had seven underclassmen on their eight-player roster.
Also, the Terps performed well in the fall at the Cissie Leary Invitational, with no player losing in the first round.
Early in the regular season, the Terps gave more reason to believe this year would be different. After beating Pittsburgh on Feb. 28, the Terps improved to 5-3, had an ACC victory and were ranked No. 61 in the nation, the highest they’d been ranked since February 2012.
But a month-long losing streak derailed the Terps’ promising season. During March, the team was unable to register a point in four separate matches and lost to five ranked teams.
By early April, the Terps had been swept seven times and had not won a match against a ranked opponent.
“We were playing against teams who were the best teams in the country,” Panova said. “Of course the confidence was down, especially for a young team that doesn’t really know how to win yet.”
Things began to turn around for the team, however, with their match against Syracuse on April 6. The match was knotted at three when the Terps lined the court next to where Olga Bredikhina was playing.
When the sophomore scored the clinching point to give the Terps their first win against a ranked opponent and their first ACC win since the match against Pittsburgh, the players rushed her court in celebration.
In the next match, against Wake Forest, the Terps won again. This time it was Nataliya Bredikhina who clinched the match-winning point to send her teammates onto the court in celebration. Back-to-back wins against ranked opponents that came down to the final singles match gave the Terps the confidence they had been missing for much of the season.
Three of the Terps’ last four wins were decided by one point. They finished the with a 9-12 overall record and a 4-10 mark in the ACC.
“Overall, it was better than last year,” Olga Bredikhina said. “It’s the most important thing that we improved as a team and that we got closer together.”
The Terps entered the ACC tournament as the No. 12 seed and faced a first-round rematch with the No. 13-seed Demon Deacons.
But Wake Forest came out on top to hand the Terps their ninth consecutive loss in the first round of the ACC tournament. The team will also be left out of the NCAA tournament for the eighth straight time after producing a losing record this season.
“To be honest, [the NCAA tournament] was the main goal,” Nataliya Bredikhina said. “It’s kind of a disappointment a little bit. But we have to use this disappointment to push ourselves for the next season.”
The Terps experienced several peaks and lows in the 2014 season. But while their focus shifts toward next season in the Big Ten, the Terps appreciate the improvements from this year while remaining unsatisfied with another early end to the season.
“It was better than it was last year,” Nataliya Bredikhina said. “At the same time, I’m very ambitious. I feel like next season we have to do even better because I believe the entire team is good enough to do much better than we did this season.”
