The No. 15 Vanderbilt women's tennis team secured another victory yesterday against the Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders at home, winning all except one of the six matches.

Junior Catherine Newman defeated MTSU's Andrea Herrera by a large margin (6-1, 6-1).

"It feels good to be playing, because I haven't been playing for a couple of weeks," Newman said after the match.

She wasn't the only one feeling good Thursday, as the rest of the young squad put on an impressive show. Senior Courtney Ulery dominated in her match, winning handily (6-2,6-2), while freshmen Chelsea Preeg (6-3, 6-3) and Heather Steinbauer (6-3, 6-1) also won in straight sets. Coming from behind in her first set, junior Hannah Blatt (6-4, 6-4) fought hard to win to close out the night. Vanderbilt's sole loss of the day came by way of an exciting tiebreaker between freshman Erica Robertson and MTSU's Alexandra Dachos. It was Erica's first match as a Vanderbilt Commodore.

"It was a little bit difficult," Robertson said. "It all comes down to executing. It just didn't happen the way I wanted tonight."

Despite the disappointing loss, Robertson showed promise, and she along with the rest of the team are looking forward to building on yesterday's success.

"We're good, we're young," Newman said. "As the season goes on we're going to get better and better. We're a little inexperienced with having four freshman on the team, but the more matches we play, the better we're going to be."

Coach Geoff Macdonald agrees.

"I thought it was a great experience. It was good for them to get a match under their belts," Macdonald said. "I thought MTSU fought really well and are well coached."

Macdonald is already looking forward to the team's next on Feb. 21 against Yale.

"We're going to work on conditioning, and we've got a lot of these matches videotaped, so early on you take players and show them what they're doing well and what can be improved," he said.