Eastern’s women’s tennis team is headed into its last weekend of conference matches.

After last weekend when the Panthers lost to Austin Peay and Murray State, the Panthers showed how this season’s attitude to be gritty, compete hard and not give up til the final point will all play into the Panther’s matches this weekend.

The Panthers had four matches against Murray State that went into three sets. Sophomore Rachel Papavasilopoulos played the first of the four three set matches and would win her match at the No.1 singles.

Seniors Abby Carpenter and Srishti Slaria were two of the other four Panthers singles matches that went into three sets.

Carpenter battled through three sets in her match at No. 4 singles. Carpenter would split her first two sets, and then would play from behind to take her last set to a first to seven points. Carpenter lost her match, but her refusal to quit and compete hard to the final point made a difference.

“I think we played great last weekend, but we happened to be playing the top two teams in the conference,” said sophomore Claire Martin. “If we bring our A-game and compete like we did this last weekend, we should hopefully get two wins this weekend which would get us a spot in the conference tournament.”

This week the team has practiced a lot of point play in order to gain confidence and feel ready come this weekend. Along with that, each member of the team had an individual lesson with tennis director Chris Tolson and assistant coach Michael Munguia to narrow down what needs to be improved on in preparation for this weekend.

The Panthers have to finish within the top six in order to play in the OVC Tournament on April 26.

The Panthers currently sit at fifth place in the OVC standings with a conference record of 2-4 and an overall record of 11-9. The last two conference matches of the season for the Panthers come against the sixth and eighth place team.

Southeast Missouri currently sits in sixth place with a conference record of 2-4 and an overall record of 9-9.

Tennessee-Martin sits in eighth place with a conference record of 1-5 and an overall record of 2-11.

Eastern’s women’s tennis team will start their weekend playing against Tennessee-Martin and the match will begin at 2 p.m. Friday.

“The team and I want to come away with two wins,” Martin said. “We want to make the tournament and are willing to stay on the court for as long as the match takes us to win.”

Blake Faith can be reached at 581-2812 or bmfaith@eiu.edu