TOWSON, Md. – After opening the 2021 season with two matches in Virginia last weekend, the Towson women's tennis team returns to Maryland and will play host to Delaware State Saturday night at Coppermine Racquet & Fitness in Pikesville. The match will begin at 6 p.m.
 
Towson (0-2) is 2-0 lifetime against the Hornets, including a 7-0 victory last March.  In the sweep, current student-athletes Themis Haliou, Alexa Martinez, Amelia Lawson, Jessica Assenmacher and Sarah Pospischill earned victories in singles. Pospischill and Lauryn Jacobs teamed up to win one of the doubles matches.  
 
Assenmacher and Jacobs earned two of the five singles victories in Towson's 5-1 win over Del State in April 2019.
 
SCOUTING DELAWARE STATE
This will be the season opening match for Delaware State. The Hornets, who went 2-4 in 2020, hired a new head coach (Pavel Zinchenko) in November.

STEPPING UP
Themis Haliou has emerged as Towson's top singles player. Last weekend, the junior went 1-1 versus the No. 1 players from James Madison and Liberty.
 
In the season opener, she lost to JMU's Daria Afanasyeva in three sets. On Saturday, she beat previously undefeated Alexandra Almborg of Liberty 6-3, 6-4.
 
"That is a good a win at number one as we have in a long time," said fourth year head coach Jamie Peterson. "Themis is coming together. She is staying emotionally calm on the court and is executing. She is a talented player. I knew when I recruited her that she had a high ceiling. Now things are coming together for her. She is playing with confidence and it is fun to watch."
 
HEY, ALEXA
Alexa Martinez has the most experience on the roster. The senior from the John Carroll School in Harford County enters the season with 44 career singles and 37 career doubles matches at Towson. As a sophomore in 2018-19, she played both No. 1 singles and No. 1 doubles for the Tigers.
 
INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR
Over half of the 2021 roster was born outside of the United States. Amelia and Antonia Lawson hail from Wellington, New Zealand, nearly 8,800 miles away from Towson. Jessica Assenmacher is a native of Johannesburg, South Africa, which is 8,085 miles from campus. Themis Haliou is from Strovolos, Cyrus, a town 5,625 miles from Towson. Sarah Pospischill was born and raised in Reisenburg, Austria, which is almost 4,400 miles away. Lea Kosanovic was born in Belgrade, Serbia (4,675 miles from Towson), but her family moved to the United States when she was five years old and she attended Walter Johnson High School in the Washington, D.C. suburbs.
 
TIGERS IN THE COMMUNITY    
The Towson University athletics department deems community service as one of its highest priorities to give back to the Greater Baltimore area. Towson was on track to have its 8th consecutive year of over 10,000 hours of community service in 2019-20 before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down all activity.  Towson finished with 7,527 hours last year, good for third in the NCAA Teamworks Helper Helper competition. Towson ranked #1 nationally for community service and won the 2018 National Championship for Community Service through the Helper Helper NCAA Team Works Competition.  Towson also won the 2018 Volunteer of the Year Award from Susan G. Komen of Maryland.