Feb. 2, 2001

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas — Notre Dame senior All-American Michelle Dasso won a pair of singles matches to reach the singles semifinals on the second day of the Rolex National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships at the Brookhaven Country Club in Farmers Branch, Texas. The third-ranked and third-seeded Dasso downed Arkansas’ 30th-ranked Chin Bee Khoo 6-3, 6-1 in the second round and then held off UCLA’s Sara Walker 6-1, 2-6, 6-4 in the quarterfinals of the third leg of the Intercollegiate Tennis Association grand slam.

Dasso next meets Stanford’s top-seeded Laura Granville, who enters the semifinal on a 52-match winning streak. Dasso’s semifinal showing marks the best for an Irish women’s tennis player at the event since Jennifer Hall also advanced to the semifinals as a freshman in 1996.

The eighth-ranked but unseeded Irish doubles team of Dasso and junior Becky Varnum dropped a doubles semifinal match to Pepperdine’s top-seeded and second-ranked Paola Palencia and Ipek Senoglu 6-3, 6-2 on Friday night. The Irish pair played a late quarterfinal match vs. Texas’ seventh-ranked and fourth-seeded team of Vladka Ulhirova and Janet Walker on Thursday and reached the semifinals with a 6-0, 6-4 win over the Longhorn duo.