As they begin the fall tournaments, the Eastern Michigan University women’s tennis team is looking to find success with a very young team.
“I’m looking for our juniors to show good leadership, as we are a young team with no seniors this year,” head coach Ryan Ray said.
“You always look for improvement in your sophomores as they now have a year of tennis experience. Our new players are very talented and I look for them to help contribute to the team’s success right away this year.”
Last year, the Eagles had an overall record of 9-15, but in the Mid-American Conference their record was 5-3. The team is looking to improve that record this year with some new faces.
“We lost three seniors from last year: Westerink, Rivero and de’Lisle-Tarr,” he said. “We have two new faces in junior Diana Davitaia, a transfer from Cowley Country Community College, and freshman Klara Supejova this fall.”
Ray is using the fall tournaments to give a good indication of where the team stands and what they need to improve on for the games that begin in January. He would really like to see a stronger, deeper team.
“I would like to see more consistency throughout the lineup,” he said. “Once you get a team that performs well on any given day in all six singles and three doubles teams, that’s when you have a lot of success.”
During the tournaments, the team will be traveling to Minneapolis for the Gopher Invitational, Miami for the FIU Panther Invitational, Colorado for the Air Force Invitational and Illinois for the ITA Midwest Regional.
The tournaments will end in October and the team’s regular season will start up in the middle of January.
The team will start off by heading to Minneapolis Sept. 14 for the Gopher Invitational.
“[The focus of our offseason was to] come back to the campus in shape and mentally ready with confidence to be champions this coming year,” Ray said.
