Orange Ready for Sunday Home Opener

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - The first home match of the Syracuse tennis spring season is finally here. The Orange kick off their month-long home stretch Sunday morning at 11 a.m. when Cornell comes to Drumlins Country Club. The match can be seen via ACC Network Extra, and live scoring is available here.

LAST TIME OUT
The Orange opened their season with two wins in Richmond, Va. last weekend. First, they took on Richmond on Saturday, dominating the Spiders by taking five of the six singles matches, and two of the three doubles matches. The culmination was a 6-1 victory for the Orange to open the new season. Sunday saw Syracuse keep the momentum going, taking down VCU, 5-2, by winning four of six singles matches and two of three doubles matches. Syracuse is 2-0 to start the season for the third consecutive year

SCOUTING THE BIG RED
Cornell came into 2020 with a new coach, Milo Johnson, after a 6-16 season last year with no conference wins. Thus far, Johnson and his squad are still looking for their first win of the new year, dropping their first three matchups and winning just one match (Michelle Deng in singles against North Florida) during that span.

The Big Red are a young team, made up of only freshman and sophomores. Leading the way in her second season is Valerie Ho, an All-Ivy League second team selection in singles last year. Ho paced the Cornell squad with 10 singles victories in 2019.

RANKED ORANGE
The Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) released its list of fall rankings on Nov. 14, and forty-nine combined fall wins was good enough to earn four rankings for Syracuse tennis. Senior Guzal Yusupova was the highest ranked Orange at No. 64 in singles, followed by senior Miranda Ramirez (No. 80) and junior Sofya Golubovskaya (No. 111). The sophomore/freshman pairing of Sofya Treshcheva and Kim Hansen earned the No. 48 doubles ranking.

Syracuse competed in five tournaments last fall, capping the year off at the ITA Northeast Regionals in West Point, N.Y. where Ramirez reached the singles main draw semifinals before losing to Princeton's Brianna Shvets. Shvets finished the fall ranked No. 24 in singles play.

NEW FACES
Syracuse added three new faces ahead of the spring season in Kim Hansen, Polina Kozyreva and Zeynep Erman.

Hansen is a three-time Dutch national champion, having earned titles at the U12, U14, and U16 levels. In her career, Hansen has claimed a singles tournament victory in the 2018 IFT 4 In-doorn Heuvelrug, along with doubles victories in the 2018 Odense ITF Junior Challenge, 2017 Open Saint Gregoire, and 2017 Heiveld Junior Indoor. Hansen won 28 career singles matches and 33 career doubles matches before coming to Syracuse.

Kozyreva has had an extended junior and professional career where she won 16 career singles and four career doubles matches. Kozyreva most notably won the 2017 Akademia Tennisa U16 Governor's Cup, and has reached the quarterfinals 10 times in her career.

Erman has competed with Turkey's U12, U16, and U18 national teams in her career, has won 60 singles matches since 2016, and she won a trio of ITF Junior Tournaments in 2016. Erman has been ranked as high as No. 156 by the ITF, and she's reached a UTR of 11.4. Erman attended Okyanus College in Istanbul where she was a member of the four-time ISF World Schools Champion squads from 2016-19.

Admission to all Syracuse tennis home matches is free. For more information about Drumlins, click here. For complete coverage of Syracuse tennis, follow us on Facebook (Syracuse University Women's Tennis, Twitter (@Cuse_Tennis) and Instagram (@cusetennis).

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Players Mentioned

Zeynep Erman

Sofya Golubovskaya

Kim Hansen

Polina Kozyreva

Miranda Ramirez

Sofya Treshcheva

Guzal Yusupova

Syracuse University Athletics