Sometimes the competition is too much.
The women’s portion of Monday’s NCAA doubles championship match featured the two tandems to defeat Florida’s No. 5 duo of freshman Allie Will and senior Marrit Boonstra this season.
The freshman-senior pair’s bid for the title ended Saturday in a thrilling three-set loss to Tennessee’s No. 1 duo, Caitlin Whoriskey and Natalie Pluskota.
If Saturday’s match had been in the regular season, it would have ended when Will and Boonstra won the first set 6-2.
The Volunteers took advantage of the best-of-three format winning the next two sets 7-5, 7-6 to win the match.
Boonstra’s college doubles career ends with a 75-21 record, including a 24-4 run at the No. 1 position this season with Will.
Will has two potential familiar doubles partners returning. She posted a 10-2 record in the fall with fellow freshman Lauren Embree and went 1-0 in the dual-match season with sophomore Claire Bartlett.
Whoriskey and Pluskota went on to face the other duo to beat Will and Boonstra in Athens, Stanford’s No. 2 Hilary Barte and Lindsay Burdette, and lost 7-5, 4-6, 6-0.
Florida’s other duos in the tournament did not make it past the first day.
Not playing together since April 2 may have affected No. 26 senior Anastasia Revzina and Embree. They lost their round of 32 match to California’s No. 9 Mari Andersson and Jana Juricova 6-7, 7-5, 6-1 on Thursday.
The loss means Revzina fell short of the 100-win plateau by one match, going 99-24 in her career.
The men’s team also said goodbye to senior Antoine Benneteau as he junior Alexandre Lacroix dropped their opening-round doubles match Thursday to Oklahoma’s Andrei Daescu and Costin Paval.
The Sooners No. 18 pair upset UF’s No. 8 duo 6-3, 6-4.
The upperclassmen tandem ended the season 31-8, only the second duo in the men’s program history to win more than 30 doubles matches in a season.
Lacroix’s singles title bid also expired on Thursday when Pepperdine’s No. 32 Bassm Beidas upset the No. 8 junior, 4-6, 7-5, 7-5.
Lacroix finished his first season at the No. 1 position 34-11.
Will was the last Gator standing in singles, making it to the round of 16 before losing on Friday to an SEC rival with home-court advantage, No. 12 Chelsey Gullickson 6-1, 6-4.
Will finished 48-5 on the season. Her two losses of the dual-match season came at the team and singles tournaments in Athens, Ga.
