PHOENIX, Ariz. – The Western New Mexico University women's tennis team will travel to Phoenix this week where they will face six teams in three days.


WNMU has already played Northern Arizona (1-6) and New Mexico (0-7) back on Feb. 2. They will open the week on Thursday against California State Stanislaus and Dixie State. On Friday, they will face Academy of Art and Dominican and then on Saturday it will be a matchup against Azusa Pacific and Point Loma. California State Stanislaus has yet to play a match this year due to weather. Dixie State is 2-2 having played against four RMAC teams. They defeated Colorado Christian (6-3) and CSU-Pueblo (7-2), but were defeated by Colorado Mesa (3-6) and Metro State (3-6). Academy of Art opened against Fresno Pacific this week and won, 8-1. Dominican has played one match as well against Sonoma State back on Feb. 1 and lost, 8-1. Azusa Pacific is 4-0 with wins over Vanguard, UC-San Diego, Point Loma and Concordia. Point Loma has lost all four of their matches this year, two by one point and the other two by three points.


The Lady Mustangs return several players from last year's team that won both the RMAC regular season and tournament titles. Junior Ganna Tiurina (Kiev, Ukraine/M.M. Gromov #227), who was named the RMAC Preseason Player of the Year after collecting RMAC Player of the Year honors in 2013, went 17-8 last season with all of her singles matches at the top flight. In doubles, she had a 14-12 mark with junior teammate Ashley Newell (Las Vegas, NV/Silverado) playing at the top position and Ashley also had a 12-14 singles record last year. Junior Marie Monier (Saint Etienne, France/St Paul Forez Montbrison) who went 10-6 in singles last year and had seven wins in doubles. Sophomore Claudia Osuna (Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico/Tec Milenio ), who posted a 10-14 singles record and also won seven matches in doubles with Monier. Senior Dena Irvin (Farmington, NM/Farmington High School) won a pair of singles matches, while sophomore Diamond Morrill (Carlsbad, NM/Carlsbad) won three singles matches and nine doubles matches. Freshmen Tiffany Newell (Las Vegas, NV/Silverado ) and Marissa Aguirre (Douglas, AZ/Douglas) are new to the team this season.