Gustavus Women’s Tennis team ready to start season strong at the ITA National Indoor Tournament this weekend

The Gustavus Women’s Tennis team has nothing less than high expectations this year as it is going for its nineteenth straight MIAC title.

“Although right now we are mainly focused on our upcoming match this weekend against Emory, our long-term goals as a team are to win our nineteenth straight MIAC title and make it to the final four of Nationals,” Senior Sierra Krebsbach said.

In order for this to happen, the team will rely on the underclassmen to step up to the challenge. With such a large first-year class, the team faces challenges daily.

Sophomore Megan Gaard explained that the first-year players are still transitioning into “Gustavus-style tennis.” “We have a very talented [first-year] class, and some of them will start in matches and some of them are still transitioning from their high school or club team to collegiate tennis,” Gaard said.

Krebsbach elaborated on the idea of “Gustavus-style tennis.” “Gustavus plays tennis with a unique concept. We have a very aggressive doubles system, which a lot of incoming [first-years] are not yet used to,” Krebsbach said.

With so many new players on the team the Gusties have an advantage over other teams with the added depth. “In tennis it is important to have a lot of depth to your team, which is exactly what we have. We have a lot of strong players and we’re all pretty evenly matched, which is helpful as well,” Krebsbach said.

With so much depth and their aggressive approach to doubles, the Gustie women tend to dominate the doubles events at their meets. “You only need five points to win a match, and when you win all the doubles matches you get three points. For our team to be dominant at doubles is a huge advantage that can help raise our ranking in the National Tournament,” Senior Ali O’Neal said.

Although the girls seem to have many strengths to their team with their depth and doubles experience, there are also areas that could use improvement, according to Gaard. “Although we dominate in the doubles round, sometimes we lose close matches because it comes down to a singles match. We definitely need to master our singles matches a little better, so we can play more consistently,” Gaard said.

O’Neal agreed with Gaard and elaborated on how she felt the team has made strides to improve on its weaknesses. “We all work hard in practice to improve on our individual weaknesses. As long as we keep that up and continue practicing consistently our overall game should improve,” O’Neal said.However, Krebsbach felt there were more elements to the game to improve than just singles. “We’ve lost a couple of close matches because we weren’t playing consistently. We need to focus on cleaning up the little mistakes and executing the important plays,” Krebsbach said.

The Gusties have been pretty successful so far, as they are 4-3 with the Indoor National Tournament coming up shortly. One of the things that has fueled the girls through the beginning of the season is the way they compete with one another in practice. “We’re all competitive with each other in practice, which helps to make for a more consistent practice. When you have a team where everyone is pretty equally skilled practice can become boring, but when everyone competes and pushes each other to their full potential practice is fun and exciting,” Krebsbach said.

The Gusties’ next match is Friday, Feb. 26 against Emory in Greencastle, Ind. at the ITA National Indoor Championships.