Warhawk tennis fans, the wait is over. After a long summer the women are back on campus, and the men are starting to trickle in as the teams prepare to build upon their strong seasons last year.
This week the women started preseason practices and they are grueling two-a-days. Although we did get some good news in this first week. For the first time ever in Warhawk tennis history the Women's team has been invited to play in the 2013 ITA National Indoor Championships. This is a tremendous honor for our women's teams as only 8 teams are invited to play. For more information about the ITA National Championships you can check out the story on the UWW athletic website by clicking here.
So far the women's practices have been amazing. We lost two terrific players from last year, Kalla Schaefer and Annie Smith, but it's obvious that our returners and new recruits have been working hard all summer to fill those spots. In fact Coach Barnes mentioned to me in a practice that he "hasn't seen a team work this hard and show this much improvement from top to bottom over a summer". It's clear from this first week of practice that the returners and our 5 new freshman are ready to build on the success of last season when the team won it's 5th straight conference title and 5th straight NCAA appearance where they made it to the sweet sixteen and ended ranked #17 in the nation and 3rd in the Central Region. This year the women have another tough schedule that should have them battle tested by the end of the season. If you would like to see our team schedule (it is still being updated everyday) click here.
The men's team won't begin their practices till the first week of September, but their schedule was released recently for the upcoming season, and it is certainly a difficult one. The fall season will consist of two tough tournaments in the fall, one is the ITA Championships and the other is a tournament hosted by Division-1 Western Illinois. The Spring schedule will be the toughest one for the men since I have been at Whitewater. It features dual matches against four Division-1 teams, UW-Madison, UW-Green Bay, Northern Illinois University, and The University of Illinois-Chicago. The men will also play matches against the current #2 and #3 teams in the nation, Amherst (last year's #1 team throughout the spring season) and Kenyon (last year's NCAA runner up). The men will also play matches against perennial nationally ranked teams included The University of Chicago, Gustavus, Kalamazoo, Pomona, DePauw, Carleton, Case Western, and numerous other regionally ranked teams and of course our WIAC conference foes. If you would like to view the full schedule you can click here.
Hopefully this tough schedule will prepare our team to help them win conference for the 8th time in the last 9 years and qualify for their 7th straight NCAA tournament appearance. Only time will tell if this team will gel enough to accomplish these goals, but with all of the top 4 players returning from last year, a terrific core of bench players with a lot of solid experience, six great new freshman, and a D-1 transfer the team looks ready to handle the task in front of them.
Overall, we are hoping for a great year for the 'Hawks!
