DENVER – The University of Denver women's tennis team earned a clean sweep of the 2023 Summit League women's tennis annual honors, the league announced on Thursday.
 
Fifth-year student Taylor Melville was named the Summit League Player of the Year; freshman Louise Wikander earned the Summit League Newcomer of the Year honor; and head coach Paul Wardlaw captured the Summit League Coach of the Year award. All seven DU student-athletes earned All-Summit League Team recognition as well.
 
Melville ended the regular season ranked No. 90 in the national ITA Tennis singles rankings while leading the Summit League with 15 wins at No. 1 singles. In League play, the Duluth, Georgia, native was perfect in singles and doubles combined, finishing with 5-0 records in both and dropping just one set in singles play.
 
Wikander matched Melville with a league high-tying 15 singles wins and a perfect 6-0 record in Summit League play during her first collegiate season. She collected 12 wins in No. 4 singles for Denver while add a win at No. 2 singles and two more in the No. 3 spot. The freshman from Helsingborg, Sweden, added a 4-0 league record in doubles.
 
Wardlaw collected Coach of the Year honors for the second year in a row after leading Denver to a perfect 6-0 record in Summit League play while conceding just a single point. DU finished the regular season ranked No. 44 in the country while claiming road wins over then-ranked opponents in Harvard and Tulsa. Denver also added wins over four teams who currently appear in the ITA Rankings: Colorado, Colorado State, Brown and Wyoming.
 
This is the fourth time that DU has swept the Summit League "of the Year" accolades. DU has now won six of the last seven Player of the Year honors and four of the last five Newcomer of the Year honors. Denver has won Coach of the Year every year dating back to 2016 (excluding 2020 when awards were not presented due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
 
For the second time since joining the Summit League in 2013-14, Denver placed all of its student-athletes on the All-League Team, doing so for the first time in 2021. Leading the way was Melville, who owned the league's best record at No. 1 singles (15-3).
 
Senior Britt Pursell had the top singles winning percentage in the conference at 14-2 including 13-2 at No. 3 singles. She started the season with 11 wins in a row and was a perfect 5-0 in Summit League matches.
 
Sophomore Andrea Burguete Beltran moved to Denver's No. 2 singles slot for the majority of the season, logging a 12-5 record and adding a win at No. 1 singles. Last season's Newcomer of the Year, she joined this year's honoree Wikander in owning a 6-0 singles record in conference play.
 
Freshman Caroline Driscoll split time between Nos. 4 and 5 singles in Summit League matches, going 5-1 overall and posting six sets won at either 6-0 or 6-1. Across the entire season, she was 11-5 including 3-0 when playing at in the No. 3 or No. 4 spots.
 
Fellow freshman Claudia Martinez de Velasco finished the regular season with a 14-3 singles record, going 5-0 in league matches. Her 10 wins at No. 6 singles were best in the Summit League, and she added two more League wins at No. 5 singles.
 
A fourth Denver freshman, Anastasia Simonov, earned an honorable mention nod with three Summit League wins and a four-match win streak to end the regular season – all coming in straight sets.
 
These are the third All-League honors for each Melville and Pursell while Burguete Beltran has now done so in both of her seasons at Denver. Driscoll, Martinez de Velasco, Simonov and Wikander are first-time honorees.
 
Denver will be the No. 1 seed for the Summit League Women's Tennis Championship set for April 21-22 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. No. 1 DU will face No. 4 Omaha in the semifinals on Friday, April 21, at 3 p.m. CT/2 p.m. MT.
 
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