The Eastern women’s and men’s tennis teams split their Ohio Valley Conference opening weekend matches at the Atkins Tennis Center in Urbana.

The women defeated Tennessee Tech 5-2 on Saturday and lost to Tennessee-Martin 4-3 on Friday.

Sophomore Carrie Larson said bouncing back for the win against Tech was key to the women’s conference hopes.

“We have such high goals for ourselves that we definitely didn’t want to dig ourselves too deep of a hole,” Larson said.

Larson said Eastern (8-3, 1-1 OVC) was nervous in the conference opener.

Larson said the teams used that experience to get the win against the Golden Eagles (3-12, 1-3) on Saturday.

Eastern won the doubles point by taking the No. 2 and No. 3 doubles matches.

At No. 1 doubles, Tech’s freshman Mireia Cano and senior Kay Ngiam defeated junior Natalie Martin and sophomore Hayley Homburg 8-4.

Eastern’s No. 2 doubles pair, senior Sandra Sasidharan and freshman Cara Huck defeated Tech’s freshmen Kelly Holtzhausen and Diana Woodcock 8-5.

In No. 3 doubles, Larson and Eastern freshman Abby Allgire won a closely contested match 9-8 against Katie Barnhill and junior Evgenia Yavtseva.

In singles action, Sasidharan defeated Holtzhausen 6-3, 1-6, 6-4. At No. 2 singles, Martin defeated Cano 6-4, 2-6, 6-2. Homburg won in straight sets against Woodcock at No. 3 singles, 6-2, 6-3.

At No. 4 singles, Barnhill defeated Allgire in a third-set tiebreaker, 6-3, 4-6, 10-7. Ngiam won the No. 5 singles match against Huck, who was retired because of an injury after Ngiam took the first set 6-1. Senior Stephanie Harmazy defeated Yavtseva 6-2, 6-4 at No. 6 singles.

The men’s team lost 6-1 against Tennessee Tech on Saturday after they defeated UT-Martin 7-0 on Friday.

Eastern freshman Felipe Gama said he thought the level of competition partially contributed to the different outcomes, but he said he felt a rematch between Eastern and Tech could turn out differently.

“I think Tennessee Tech is way better than Tennessee-Martin,” Gama said. “Even with that, I think if we played again, we’d have a good chance at beating them.”

The Golden Eagles (11-3, 4-0) took five of the six singles matches, winning four in straight sets. Senior Chris Thomas won the lone singles match for the Panthers (7-6, 1-1), and defeated freshman Mario Gutierrez 6-2, 6-3 at No. 5 singles.

Gama liked where the men’s team is currently sitting for the season and said losing Sunday in no way derailed what the team is trying to do.

“If we win both matches this week, we’ll be 3-1 in the conference, and be in a very good position,” Gama said.

The men’s and women’s teams will both play OVC opponent Morehead State at 9 a.m. Thursday in Morehead, Ky.

JC Clark can be reached at 581-7944 or at jrclark2@eiu.edu.