OGDEN, Utah — Eastern Washington women's tennis spent the weekend in Ogden for the Weber State Invitational, starting on Friday and concluding Sunday (Oct. 2-4). 

The Invitational determined the Big Sky's automatic qualifiers in singles and doubles for the fall NCAA tournaments. Each Big Sky team was represented by its top two singles and doubles players. 

Olivia Marais and Zoe Pradel competed for EWU in both singles and doubles. 

"I feel like, overall, this weekend we got better and stronger as the matches went on. We got better in singles and doubles, but definitely in the last two doubles matches that Liv [Marais] and Zoe [Pradel] played. I feel like we made some good strides, and it's good to see the team going against the best players in our conference. It was good competition," head coach Dustin Hinson said. "Zoe getting to the quarterfinals was good, and she had a tough three-set match that could've gone either way. I liked to see her compete that way. I'm looking forward to getting everybody on the team back out next week as we go to the Northwest Regionals at Stanford. "

On Sunday, Marais and Pradel won the doubles consolation bracket. The duo faced Montana's Angel Bean and Naomi Jin in the consolation semifinals and won 8-4. Now in the consolation finals, Marais and Pradel faced Idaho's Yu-Ching Hsieh and Naomi Schraeder. The pair of Eagles secured the win 8-5 to take the bracket. 

In the singles' bracket, Pradel advanced to the quarterfinals after defeating Marta Giglio from Portland State in the round of 16 (6-3, 7-5). She dropped the quarterfinal match against Idaho State's Emmy Richards (6-1, 3-6, 3-6).

Marais won her round-of-32 match against the Griz's Kamila Slovakova in two sets (7-5, 6-1). In the round of 16, Marais fell to Northern Arizona's Andrea Noguera, 6-2, 6-3. 
 

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Eastern Washington University Athletics sponsors 14 intercollegiate sports, six for men and eight for women, both as learning opportunities for its most athletically talented students and as an enhancement to student and community life. Eastern is affiliated with Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and is a member of the Big Sky Conference, an association of 10 regional schools with comparable enrollments and academic goals.

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