Auburn women’s tennis clinched its first Southeastern Conference (SEC) Championship on April 12, defeating No. 13 Vanderbilt 4-0 at the Yarbrough Tennis Center. The No. 4 Tigers secured a share of the conference title by winning the doubles point and sweeping three singles matches, all led by seniors, on Senior Day.
The victory marks a milestone for Auburn’s program and comes after years of effort to reach the top of SEC standings. Head coach Jordan Szabo said, “It was a great day celebrating the seniors and winning an SEC title. Couldn’t have scripted it any better with all three seniors winning their singles matches for a terrific way to put an exclamation mark on a great regular season with so many records broken.”
The match began with Auburn’s Ashton Bowers and Ekaterina Khairutdinova earning their 24th win in doubles this spring at the No. 3 position, followed by DJ Bennett and Ava Esposito completing a comeback victory in tiebreaker fashion at No. 1 doubles to secure the opening point for Auburn. In singles play, Angella Okutoyi delivered a straight-set win over Erin Pearce to give Auburn its second point before Bennett defeated Bridget Stammel—ranked sixth nationally—to extend Auburn’s lead.
Khairutdinova then clinched both her match and the team victory with another straight-set performance against Valeria Ray. Szabo praised his team’s resilience in doubles: “In doubles, finding a way to claw our way back from 5-2 double-break down against a pair that made the NCAA finals was excellent.” He added about his players’ achievements: “It was a great day, a history-making day, and hopefully these girls will remember this for the rest of their lives.”
With this result, Auburn moved into a three-way tie atop the SEC standings at 13-2 in conference play—their previous best finish being second place in 2022—and improved their overall record to 29-3 while remaining undefeated at home.
Looking ahead, Auburn will enter postseason competition as they travel to Norman, Oklahoma for the SEC Championship tournament as the No. 3 seed beginning Friday morning.
