Beazant Leads Owls in C-USA Honors Parade
4/24/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
Houston, Texas - By Chuck Pool
One week after winning a third consecutive C-USA Championship and five days before the NCAA will announced where their season will continue, the members of the Rice Owls women's tennis dominated the conference's list of annual awards which were released on Friday.
Senior Natalie Beazant, who has risen to third on the Rice career wins list, was selected by conference coaches as the C-USA Player of the Year for the second time in her illustrious career. Rice head coach Elizabeth Schmidt earned her third consecutive C-USA Coach of the Year honor while Alison Ho and Lindsey Hodge were honored as the Outstanding Doubles of the C-USA Championship.
In addition, every member of the Owls starting lineup was honored by league coaches as part of the All C-USA singles and doubles teams.
Beazant, Katherine Ip and Savannah Durkin were named to the singles first team, Hodge and Liat Zimmermann were named to the second team and Solomiya Zinko was named to the third team. The doubles teams of Beazant and Zimmermann and Ho and Hodge were named to the doubles first team while Zinko and Durkin were named to the second team.
Beazant finished the regular season with a 17-3 (.850) mark in singles at No. 1 and is currently ranked No. 29 in the nation. Here .850 winning percentage was her highest since her freshman year (.926) and her ranking would be her third time to finish in national top 30 in four seasons... She became the fourth Owl to reach 100 career wins in singles and finished the regular season with a career mark of 112-32 (3rd). She and Zimmermann Ccombined to be unbeaten in six of last eight doubles matches and clinched the doubles point in the C-USA title match vs. Marshall.
Ho and Hodge combined to solidify the No. 2 doubles tandem and were unbeaten in nine of their last 11 matches. Five of their last seven wins delivered the doubles point to Rice. They clinched the doubles point in two of three wins at C-USA Championship, finishing the weekend 3-0 by a combined score of 24-7.
Schmidt earned the Coach of the Year award outright for the third consecutive year after earned a share of the honor in 2012.
The Owls, currently ranked 28th in the country, have earned an automatic berth in the NCAA Tennis Championship. The bracket for the team competition will be announced by the NCAA as part of a webcast on Tuesday.
Players Mentioned
