DENVER – Boise State’s Vicente Joli and Lauren Megale have been named the Verizon Western Athletic Conference Tennis Players of the Week for March 22-28. This is the second honor of the season and of his career for Joli and the first honor of the season and third of her career for Megale.
Joli, a senior from Castellion, Spain, went 5-0 at No. 2 singles and 4-0 at No. 2 doubles last week as Boise State went 5-0 on the week with four wins over ranked teams. The Broncos defeated No. 63 Idaho twice, No. 47 UC Irvine, No. 71 Purdue and Portland. Joli did not lose a set, picking up straight-sets wins in all five of his singles matches to move his season record to 16-11. In doubles, he and partner Filipp Pogostkin earned four wins on the week.
Megale, a junior from Boise, Idaho, finished the weekend with a 3-0 record at No. 2 singles and a 3-0 mark at No. 1 doubles as the Broncos went 2-1 last week, defeating Oregon and UC Irvine and dropping a 4-3 match at UNLV. The highlight of the week for Megale was an upset over No. 103 Jana Albers of UNLV on Sunday, 6-0, 2-6, 6-1. In doubles, she teamed with Pichittra Thongdach to defeat all three opponents.
Other male nominees included: Fresno State’s Siddharth Alapati clinched a highly-contested match against TCU with a win at No. 6 singles … Wessim Derbel of Nevada went 2-0 at No. 2 singles and 1-1 at No. 2 doubles last week … New Mexico State’s Orlando Superlano went 3-0 at No. 4 singles and 2-1 at No. 1 doubles on the week … Bryan Marchant of Utah State went 2-1 at No. 3 singles and 1-2 at No. 1 doubles last week.
Other female nominees included: Fresno State’s Renata Kucerkova went 1-1 at No. 1 singles, including an upset of No. 29 Marta Lesniak of SMU, and 1-1 at No. 1 doubles on the week … Alyssa Nafarrete of Hawai’i picked up a straight-sets win at No. 6 singles and won at No. 2 doubles vs. Chaminade … Nevada’s Maria Mizyuk went 2-0 at No. 1 singles and 0-2 at No. 1 doubles last week.