ST. PAUL, Minnesota – The No. 49-ranked University of Denver women's tennis team (7-4, 1-0 Summit) won its 2026 Summit League opener with a 5-2 victory at St. Thomas on Saturday afternoon.
For the seventh time this season, DU won the doubles point before capturing four straight-sets singles wins to clinch its first league win of what will be Denver's final season in the Summit League.
Doubles:
Denver shuffled its Nos. 1 and 3 doubles pairings and successfully came away with the point after both teams captured wins.
For the first time in dual match play, senior
Marley Lambert and freshman
Yunfei Cai teamed up, doing so in the No. 1 slot for Denver and started things off with a 6-3 win to get DU halfway to the point.
St. Thomas kept the doubles fight alive with a win in the No. 2 match, but Denver's new No. 3 team of senior
Hana Bečirovič Novak and sophomore
Natálie Cinková earned a 6-4 win to give DU the 1-0 overall lead. It was only the second time this season that the two had played doubles together and their first since the opening day of the fall season.
Singles:
Five of the six singles matches wrapped up in straight sets with four of them going the way of the Pioneers. Leading the way was a dominant double-bagel performance from Cai at No. 6 singles, the best result of the freshman's young collegiate career and her third win of the dual season with two or fewer games lost.
UST got on the board for the first time with Caroline Lindahl's win at the No. 2 spot, but Cinková reclaimed a two-point Denver lead with her team-best 20
th singles win of the year and her sixth in dual match play – all six coming in straight sets.
Senior
Louise Wikander clinched the dual for Denver with two 6-4 sets at No. 1 singles. With the win, she moved to 7-1 in dual matches – the best record on the roster -- in what is her first season playing at the top position in the lineup.
Fellow senior
Zoe Adkins added a fifth point for DU, matching Wikander's 6-4 6-4 scoreline in what was the transfer's first Summit League match as a Pioneer. She now owns three singles wins in 2026, all coming in two sets and all at the No. 3 slot.
The day's final match to finish was the only one to go beyond two sets, seeing UST's Else Vander Stichele winning the third set to give the home team a second point on the board.
Up Next:
The No. 49-ranked University of Denver women's tennis team finishes its seven-match road trip when it plays at Minnesota on Sunday, March 1, at 11 a.m. CT/10 a.m. MT.
