Cougar tennis experienced both satisfaction and heartbreak during their road trip to Seattle and Eugene this weekend.

The Cougars (10-4, 0-2 in Pac-12) earned a decisive victory against Portland on Friday, before losing back-to-back matches to Washington and Oregon on Saturday and Sunday.

The team began the weekend with a 5-2 victory over the Pilots (6-3, 0-1 in WCC), in which the team won two out of three doubles matches and four out of six singles matches. With this win over Portland, the Cougars have now won 12 consecutive matches against the Pilots.

The Cougars got off to a fast start as freshmen Donika Bashota and Nastia Vasyukhina earned a victory over UP freshman Amanda Zuidema and junior Emily Gould by a score of 6-3. The Pilots evened the score when UP junior Maja Mladenovic and senior Sophie van den Aarssen defeated WSU sophomore Victoria Matejevic and junior Maria Biryukova 6-2.

The team clinched the doubles point when senior Elizaveta Luzina and junior Lize Leenknecht defeated UP sophomores Lucia Butkovska and Jelena Lazarevic by a score of 6-3. The win gave the Cougars a 1-0 overall lead heading into singles play.

The Cougars expanded their lead to 3-0 when Matejevic and Vasyukhina earned back-to-back victories. Butkovska earned the Pilots their first point of the day when she defeated WSU’s Luzina 6-2, 6-4. The team clinched the match when Bashota defeated UP’s Lazarevic in a thriller by a score of 7-6 (7-5), 6-2.

On Saturday, the Cougars ended the weekend with a tough loss to No. 40 Washington by a score of 4-3. The Huskies (7-4, 1-0 in Pac-12) won two out of three doubles matches before withstanding a late WSU rally in singles play to clinch the match.

The team started slow as UW junior Elianne Douglas-Miron and senior Riko Shimizu defeated Luzina and Leenknecht by a score of 8-3. The Cougars evened the score in doubles play when Biryukova and Matejevic defeated UW sophomore Angela Chen and freshman Miki Kobayashi in a tightly-contested match by a score of 8-6.

UW’s Douglas-Miron expanded the Huskies’ lead with a victory over Luzina by a score of 7-6 (5), 6-4 to open singles play. The win gave the Huskies a 2-0 lead before back-to-back wins by Biryukova and Leenknecht tied the score at 2-2.

UW senior Julija Lukac gave the Huskies a 3-2 lead after defeating Bashota 6-4, 6-4. The Cougars quickly responded when Matejevic defeated UW’s Shimizu by a score of 7-5, 6-2. With the overall score tied at 3-3, the Huskies clinched the match when UW’s Douglas-Miron defeated Luzina by a score of 7-6 (5), 6-4.

The Cougars then traveled down the I-5 freeway to face the Oregon Ducks (6-3, 1-0 in Pac-12) in Eugene. For the second time that weekend, the team lost to a Pac-12 opponent by a score of 4-3.

The team began the match by sealing the doubles point, winning two out of three doubles matches against the Ducks. UO responded in a big way by winning three of the first five singles matches.

With the score tied at three, UO freshman Nia Rose rallied from a set down to defeat Luzina by a score of 4-6, 6-3 and 6-4 to clinch the match for the Ducks. With the loss, the Cougars end their four-game winning streak against UO.

The Cougars will aim to rebound from back-to-back losses opening conference play when they face UCLA and Lewis-Clark State in a home double-header on Friday. The team will compete against UCLA at 11 a.m. and LCSU at 5 p.m.

Reporting by Curtis Calhoun