“Ash played an amazing match today,” Aggie head coach Ivan Fernandez said. “This was a great experience for her and an amazing tournament. She now knows that she can compete with the top players in the country and I am super proud of her.”
The Aggie junior from Pune, India, advanced further than any NM State women’s tennis player has ever advanced at the All-American Championships, one of the most prestigious and competitive tournaments of the national tennis schedule, which this year was hosted by UCLA.
Shrivastava, who had not lost a set all tournament, came out without skipping a beat en route to winning her seventh-straight set after winning set one 6-2.
Routliffe, however, showed why she is a top-50 player in the nation and adjusted her game to handily win the second set, 6-0, to set up a third and decisive set.
Shrivastava would battle throughout the final set, showing that she belonged with the top players in the country. But the Aggie junior, who is only in her second season of collegiate tennis, would eventually lose a hard-fought set 6-4.
Still, it was a great week for Shrivastava in California, picking up wins over the 105th-ranked player in the country and the No. 1 player from Boston College before falling to a top-50 player in three sets.
Coupled with a co-champion performance at the Aggie Invitational to kick off the fall schedule, the season has gotten off to a great start for NM State’s top player.