Box Score ROME, Ga.- Ave Maria University tennis players Lara Teodoro and Vitoria Barandas competed last weekend in the ITA Cup, the top event for NAIA players to compete in singles and doubles action. The Brazilian duo earned a spot in the quarterfinals, and posted a 2-1 record overall against some of the best doubles teams in the nation.

The ITA Cup, which was held at the Rome Tennis Center on the campus of Berry College in Rome, Georgia, is the only championship for NAIA players where singles and doubles champions are crowned - the NAIA championships in the spring only crown a team champion. 16 players competed for a national championship in singles, while 16 pairs did the same in doubles.

Ave Maria's duo earned a victory in the first round, taking down a regional championship team from William Woods (Mo.). Teodoro and Barandas defeated William Woods' duo of Ana Zavala and Hanna Lindeboom, doing so with a convincing 6-1, 6-3 victory. The win was an impressive one for the Gyrenes, as the William Woods duo won the ITA Central East doubles title, and Zavala ended the 2020-21 season as a top 50 player in the nation.

Teodoro and Barandas dropped their second match of the tournament, facing the second seed in the tournament from Montreat College, Stephanie Petit and Valerie Quiceno Ibarguen. The team from Montreat, which included the eventual individual national champion in Petit, picked up a 6-1 6-3 victory over the AMU pair. 

In AMU's lone consolation round matchup, Teodoro and Barandas earned another win to finish the tournament in the top six teams nationally. The opponent in the consolation bracket came from Indiana Wesleyan in the person of Melanie Dveksler and Thais Mendez. The Gyrenes took the opening set, 7-5, before dropping the second set 6-3. In the third set tiebreaker, Teodoro and Barandas moved to 2-1 on the tournament with a dramatic 12-10 win.

The wins by Ave Maria's duo are crucial to earn continued national respect for the Ave Maria program, which will be in search for its first NAIA National Championship berth in 2022. Ave Maria's fall season is set to continue this weekend at the YTF Tournament, which will be hosted in Lakeland by Southeastern University.