It may have been an open date for the football team, but it’s been a busy weekend for the Georgia Bulldogs in other sports, so, just to get you up to speed, here’s the quick rundown of the day’s events in your Sunday sports summary:
Despite Alexa Newfield’s 11 shots and two penalty-kick goals, the Georgia women’s soccer team dueled to a second straight draw in a 2-2 tie with Alabama in Athens. Newfield twice gave the home team a one-goal lead, but the Crimson Tide knotted the score each time, in the second instance with a penalty kick. The Red and Black took 27 shots over the course of the contest, including seven in a pair of scoreless overtime periods.
The Athenians remain unbeaten in six straight outings, and Georgia now stands at 12-4-2 overall and 6-2-2 in conference play. The Bulldogs close out the regular season at home against Tennessee on Friday night before beginning SEC Tournament play in Orange Beach, Ala., on November 2.
A Georgia women’s tennis tandem will win the ITA Southeast Regional Championships doubles title, while Chelsey Gullickson is in the running for the singles crown, as well. Gullickson and Lilly Kimbell dispatched a Florida duo in the semifinals, 8-5, matching the score by which Kate Fuller and Lauren Herring defeated a Florida State pairing to ensure an all-Bulldog final.
Gullickson, who is 4-0 in doubles matches when paired with Kimbell, improved to 12-1 in singles matches Sunday by beating Joanna Mather, 6-0, 6-1, in the quarterfinals and Sofie Oyen, 6-1, 6-1, in the semifinals. Mather and Oyen both were Gator netters playing on their home court in Gainesville, Fla., and Gullickson will face a third Sunshine State Saurian in Monday morning’s singles final, as the Orange and Blue’s Lauren Embree eliminated Herring to reach the last match.
The Georgia men’s tennis team had a similarly successful Sunday at the ITA Southeast Regional Championships at the Dan Magill Tennis Complex, with Sadio Doumbia, Hernus Pieters, and Ignacio Taboada outlasting quarterfinal singles challenges from Florida State, Florida, and Georgia Tech netters, respectively. In the semifinals, Taboada eliminated Pieters, 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, to set up a title match against the Yellow Jackets’ Kevin King, who ousted Doumbia, 6-0, 6-3. (I would note, for the record, that Kevin King and I are not related to one another, nor would we be likely to claim kinship with each other if we were.)
Both doubles semifinals pitted tandems from the two SEC schools whose football teams will square off in Jacksonville on Saturday, with the good guys winning once. Pieters and Taboada fell to Florida’s Billy Federhofer and Nassim Slilam, 8-6, while Garrett Brasseaux and Wil Spencer bested Gators Andrew Butz and Bob van Overbeek, 8-3. The singles and doubles finals will get underway in Athens at 10:00 a.m. Monday.
The fourth-ranked Bulldogs hosted another top ten team on Sunday, and the Georgia riders dealt Texas Christian a 16-4 setback. The Red and Black were dominant in the English events, carding 5-0 triumphs in equitation over fences and in equitation on the flat. Georgia claimed 3-2 victories in horsemanship and in reining to run the Bulldogs’ record to 2-1 heading into their November 4 road date against No. 3 South Carolina.
Although Lizzy Stemke’s Georgia women’s volleyball team lost in four sets to No. 20 Tennessee, the young Bulldog squad played toe-to-toe with the Volunteers, who improved to 18-3 overall and 11-1 in SEC action. The Big Orange claimed the first set, 25-15, but the Red and Black bounced back, dropping the second set by a narrow 25-23 margin before winning the third set, 28-26. Tennessee outlasted Georgia, 25-21, in a competitive fourth set. The closeness of the contest was attested to by the Vols’ narrow leads in aces (6-4), digs (61-57), and kills (56-48). The Bulldogs forced ties ten times in the second set, 14 times in third set, and 13 times in the fourth set, demonstrating the extent to which Coach Stemke’s young club is on the rise, despite its 5-7 conference record.
At the SEC/Pac-12 Challenge in Knoxville, Tenn., the Georgia women’s golf team used a six-under final round by Marta Silva Zamora to finish seventh in a tournament in which the Bulldogs stood at 17th after the opening round. Silva Zamora’s 66 tied the second-best round in Red and Black history to conclude the Bulldogs’ fall schedule on a high note.
At the Outerbanks Collegiate Invitational, the Georgia men’s golf team fired the fifth-lowest loop in school history to take a ten-shot first-round lead over Liberty. Four Athenians were among the top 15 individual scorers, led by T.J. Mitchell (64), Keith Mitchell (65), Bryden Macpherson (70), and Michael Cromie (72). As a squad, the Bulldogs shot a 271, putting the Red and Black 17 under par. The Powells Point, N.C.-based tourney continues at Kilmarlic Golf Club on Monday and concludes on Tuesday.
Go ‘Dawgs!