Christina Ruiz and Rachel Hush took the doubles title as the Marquette women’s tennis team opened its season at the 34th Annual Milwaukee Tennis Classic at the Western Racquet club.

The duo finished the weekend 3-0 at the No.1 doubles spot beating Alabama, 8-5, Wisconsin-Madison, 8-5, and Western Michigan, 8-3, to claim the women’s doubles championship.  

The No. 2 doubles team of Paola Calderon and Olga Fisher also performed well finishing the weekend 2-1 defeating Alabama and Western Michigan but falling to UW-Madison. Rachel Hush and Gillian Hush were also awarded the Chas Mulcahy Sportsmanship Award.  

“For being the first tournament I was pretty pleased,” coach Jody Bronson said. “We played at an extremely high level at doubles and showed a lot of maturity and development from last year.”

Bronson did note, however, that the singles players have some work to do to get to a higher level, a level they need to be at.

On the first day of the tournament, the singles teams went 3-4 against Western Michigan with victories by the sophomore Calderon, Ruiz and freshman Kelly Barry. The doubles teams went 2-1 against the Broncos.

Day two was not so kind to the women who faced all three teams in singles while only managing to come out with a win in one match, another Barry victory. The doubles teams dropped two of three against UW-Madison. 

Marquette rebounded on the final day sweeping Western Michigan at the doubles positions while splitting six matches against the Badgers with wins by Fisher, Gillian Hush and Ruiz.