Whitewater, Wis. - The Illinois Tech women's tennis team concluded their 2021-22 season with a first-round loss to host University of Wisconsin-Whitewater 5-0 in the NCAA Division III Women's Tennis Championships Thursday morning. The Scarlet Hawks finished their season 16-6 overall. 

The women's team completed their most successful season in recent program history. They finished as the third seed during the regular season, and upset perenial NACC powers Concordia-Wisconsin and Edgewood College in the NACC Conference Championship. The tournament title also provided the team with their first-ever NCAA post-season berth. 

"We endured a lot of 6am practices. And we had a lot of uncertainties" said first-year Head Coach Kris Powell. "But we pushed through and made history. I am very proud of my players and happy for my seniors to finally get a conference championship" Powell stated.

The #36 ranked Warhawks proved to be too formidable of an opponent on this day. The Warhawks started the match by taking all three doubles matches for a 3-0 match lead. The number one doubles match was the most competitive, as the Hawks' pair of Morgan Colbert and Kylie Hance took the Warhawks' pair of Autumn Bruno and Cassie Lee to a tie-breaker before falling 8-7. The number two pair of Natalie Hamill and Allyson Trang fell to Molly Rueth and Kellie Ha 8-1. In the number three doubles match, Mouna Chahin and Kaitlyn Graves battled but fell 8-4 to Courtney Day and Bryce Bigelow.

In singles play, the number five and six matches were the deciding matches that gave Wisconsin-Whitewater their five win total for the match victory. Rueth defeated Chahin 6-1, 6-1 in the number five match, and Elsie Ha defeated Graves 6-2, 6-2 in the number six singles match. The matches for Colbert, Hamill, Hance and Trang went unfinished once the Warhawks clinched the overall match.

The Scarlet Hawks women's team next year will look much different, as multiple seniors played their final matches on Thursday. Colbert, Hance, Trang and Chahin finished a combined 174-95 in singles competition in their Hawk careers, good for a 65% win percentage. Those players will be very difficult to replace. Still, Coach Powell will look to rebuild the squad for next season and beyond, with the hopes of getting the progam back to this year's level of success.