Griz drop two in Portland

Sunday, March 15

Portland, Ore.

11 AM

Montana

Portland

3/16/2026 4:18:00 PM | Women's Tennis

Box Score 1 Box Score 2

By: Montana Sports Information

The Montana women's tennis team dropped a 4-3 heartbreaker at Portland State on Monday morning to wrap-up its two match trip to Oregon. The Griz also fell to the University of Portland 5-2 on Sunday in the Rose City to go 0-2 on the weekend as a team.

Individual winners for UM included Grizzly No. 1 Kelsey Phillips, who stayed undefeated in Big Sky Conference play at 4-0 this season with a dominant victory at Portland State. Fellow junior Paige Bott picked up two wins in singles over the weekend with a pair of three-setters on court five.

Sophomore Kate Prichard also pulled out a win in a third set tiebreaker against the Pilots on Sunday and freshman Kamila Slovakova earned another singles win for UM on Monday against the Vikings.

Montana now falls to 2-10 on the year and 0-4 in Big Sky play. The University of Portland improved to 4-5 and Portland State moved to 5-4 overall and 1-1 in conference play after falling to Montana State 2-5 on Sunday.

A Grizzly comeback attempt fell just short against the Vikings. UM started the match down after losing all three doubles matches to trail 0-1, but won three singles matches to put themselves in a position to win.

Montana took a brief 2-1 lead in the comeback attempt when Slovakova blew past Anjola Ige 6-1, 6-1, on court six and Phillips took down Scarlett Perkins 6-3, 6-1, on court one. The Vikings punched back though, sweeping the middle of the lineup with wins on courts two and three to take a 3-2 lead.

With the final two deciding matches each entering a third set, PSU clinched the win on court four when Kasumi Hirayama bounced-back to defeat Prichard 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, to seal the win with a 4-2 lead.

Montana closed with a victory in the last match of the day when Bott rebounded for a 3-6, 6-4, 7-5 win after trailing by two games in the final set.

"The team came out and fought hard in the singles matches and pushed PSU to the limit today. It was great to see Kelsey continue her unbeaten streak in singles as well. Paige worked through a tough three set match after dropping the first. She competed well and was able to step up at the end to close it out. Kate also had a great match. It was impressive how she battled back after going down in the third set to Mae it really challenging on her opponent to close it out," said head coach Steve Ascher.

"Kate and Paige got nice wins against Portland too. It's been great to see their growth and see them put the pieces together against good opponents."

Phillips and Meghna Anand earned a win in the doubles round against the Pilots, as the Griz again started from behind with losses on courts two and three. In singles, Prichard and Bott both picked up wins in third set superbreakers after the Pilots had already clinched the victory.

Montana will now play a pair of nonconference matches in St. George, Utah, facing the Utah Tech Trailblazers and Tarleton State on March 27 and 28 before returning home to play four of their last five matches of the year in Missoula.