Senior Salutes: Women's Tennis honors Laura Fernandez in last home match

Tennis teams are nice and small and don't have many seniors. This is good when you forget that Senior Day is here and you're in the midst of covering a search for a new basketball coach.

But happily I'm writing this with hours to spare. Women's Tennis has two remaining matches in their MAC season, and is in good, if not great position to advance to the MAC Championships with a top-six seed. Today's showdown with Akron, though, will be the last home match of the year.

With that, it's time for our customary Senior Salute for the lone graduating Bull

Laura Fernandez, Madrid, Spain

Senior Stats: In singles, Laura has most frequently played out of the #4 slot for a 7-7 (1-3 MAC) record in duals this year. She's also 2-3 in tournament play from the fall. In doubles, she's teamed up all year with Laura Holterbosch to the tune of a 5-7 record in dual matches but 4-1 in tournament play.

Before UB: It's a little harder to track down information here, but Fernandez won three Madrid titles in high school competition before spending her freshman year at Louisiana Tech, where she stepped right into the #1 singles lineup.

Buffalo Career: Prior to this year Fernandez had always teams up with Marta Stoyanova in doubles play, and was 15-16 in doubles play her first two years in Amherst. It's in singles as a junior though, that Fernandez took a big leap foward, going 20-9 to help UB to their first MAC Semifinal since 2010.

Fernandez needs two more singles wins to enter the top-ten all time at UB and two more doubles wins to enter the top-15.

Senior Moment: In an early weekend that saw matches against top-ranked JUCO ASA College and Youngstown State, Laura was part of two winning doubles pairings and won each of her singles matches, earning her UB Athlete of the Week honors.

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After today there's still another match and the MAC Championships, so the season's not quite over yet, but right now is our chance to say thank you and best of luck to Laura for three great years in Amherst.

Go Bulls