May 23, 2001
STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. — Notre Dame four-time All-American women’s tennis player and the 2001 Intercollegiate Tennis Association National Senior Player-of-the-Year Michelle Dasso (Long Grove, Ill./Stevenson HS) twice rallied from a first-set loss to reach the quarterfinals of the NCAA singles championship on Wednesday at the Lincoln Tennis Center in Stone Mountain, Ga. She beat Weber State’s 47th-ranked Lenka Zacharova 5-7, 6-3, 6-0 in the second round and then won a tight 6-7 (7-3), 7-6 (7-1), 6-4 third-round match over Washington’s No. 9-16 seed and 11th-ranked Kristina Kraszewski.
She will play her quarterfinal match at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday against Ohio State’s 27th-ranked Kristy Dascoli for a spot in the semifinals. Dasso and Dascoli will meet for the third time this season after Dasso won defeated Dascoli in the final of the ITA Midwest Singles Championship and at No. 1 singles earlier in the season.
“I was able to win the match because I fought off her aggressiveness and stayed out there as long as I could,” said Dasso after defeating Kraszewski. “I told myself to be more aggressive in the second set tiebreaker and that forced her into a couple of errors. I have to continue to take each match as it comes and to play the way I played today.”
The No. 5-8 seeded doubles team of Dasso and junior All-American Becky Varnum (Colorado Springs, Colo./Cheyenne Mountain) dropped its second-round match to Dascoli and Monica Rincon by a 6-0, 6-4 score.
Dasso, who had not won a match in the NCAA singles tournament in her first three appearances, trailed Zacharova 3-5 in the first set before leveling the set at 5-5 — only to have Zacharova win the final two games for a 7-5 first set. Dasso then took over the match with a 6-3, 6-0 score in the final two sets. In her second match of the day, she beat Kraszewski for the second time in as many ITA grand slam meetings, also winning in the first round of the Riviera All-American Championships in October.
Dasso and Kraszewski traded early breaks of serve in the first set before Kraszewski pulled out the set 7-3 in a tiebreaker. Dasso led 5-3 in the second set, but Kraszewski rallied for a 6-5 lead. After holding serve to force another tiebreaker, Dasso blitzed to a 7-1 decision in the tiebreaker to force a third set. Kraszewski built a 4-2 lead in final set, before Dasso rallied once again by winning the final four games of the match to reach at least the quarterfinals for the third time in four grand slams this season.