The No. 41 Marshall University tennis team is set to play its first matches outside at the Brian David Fox Tennis courts as the Thundering Herd hosts Winthrop on Friday afternoon and Penn State on Sunday afternoon.
The Herd (12-3) is coming off a 4-3 victory at the Liberty in its first outdoor match of the season, and will now have its top singles and doubles player back in Michaela Kissell who has missed the past two matches.
Winthrop enters Friday’s match at 10-9 and has been in and out of the national rankings this season. The Eagles are currently not ranked after dropping their last two matches at North Carolina State and at Virginia Tech. Marshall marks the 10th nationally-ranked team Winthrop has played, with five of them in the top 30, including playing No. 1 Florida and No. 3 North Carolina.
Penn State, the alma mater of MU head coach John Mercer, comes to Huntington on a seven match losing streak and posts an overall record of 3-8. PSU’s top player, Petra Januskova, has a singles record of 7-3.
Friday’s contest with Winthrop is set for 1 p.m., while Sunday’s first serve against the Nittany Lions is scheduled for 12 p.m. For the first ever time at Marshall, fans will be able to follow up-to-the-minute live scoring by logging on to the front page of herdzone.com.