Game, Set, Match: Tribe Women’s Tennis 2011-2012

The stage was set for the Tribe Invite. With new transfers and a cohesive team, Tribe Women’s Tennis was looking to start strong. Their first invite of the year, this was where the Tribe would show off its hard-work and set the expectations for the season.

Oh, and did I mention the Tribe Invite was scheduled during their second week of practice?

At that Tribe Invite, Junior Marlen Mesgarzadeh and sophomore Maria Belaya claimed the top doubles flight. This aided in the preseason Campbell’s ITA National Rankings, with the Tribe showing five players selected to compete in the 2011 Riviera/ITA All-American Championships. Three Tribe star singles players were among the top 125 in the country, and one Tribe doubles pair made it into the national standings.

I sat down with Anik Cepeda, a junior on the Tribe Tennis team, in order to discuss this fall season and her goals for the team for the fall season. Anik is an International Relations major at the College from Texas, who usually plays both singles and doubles, but she prefers the fast-pace and camaraderie of doubles. She also writes the tennis team’s blog (which you can read here).

This season was defined by the performances of doubles-pair Jeltje Loomans and Maria ‘Masha’ Belaya. Loomans, a two-sport athlete from the Netherlands, is a sophomore at the College, and Masha is a sophomore transfer from Clemson, new to the team this year. The pair qualified at All-Americans and made it to the semi-finals of Regionals.

When asked what having such impressive displays from two teammates meant for the team as a whole, Cepeda confidently commented “It shows that we belong up with the top teams in the nation. This is what Tribe does, Tribe wins. We should expect to be in those positions and execute.”

As we approach finals, Women’s Tennis winds down into eight overseen hours of training a week instead of twenty, and the team looks forward to the spring season. “For me, the spring is the team season, which is what college tennis is all about,” Cepeda conjectured. “Team [for tennis] means that you do what you need to do on your court to help the overall outcome. You focus on yourself and what you do best to win in order to get the team a point. It’s not so individual- to the point that I can feel energy coming off of another court. I can sense when someone wins a set.”

The Tribe’s schedule for this upcoming season is bound to be challenging. With a match set against the ranked Duke team, the Tribe is excited for the challenge and ready to compete. As a Tribe fan, the game to watch out for is the VCU match. A rivalry always fun to watch, Cepeda pointed that  match-up out as the high-point of the home season.

Talking to Anik, I learned a lot about the beauty in tennis. She loves an elegant game, one in which the player is poised and creates shots that are uncomfortable why all the while making it look easy. For that it’s all about Rafael Nadal. The other end of that spectrum is a power game, the famous example being the aggressive-hitting Williams sisters. Tennis may be individualistic in nature, but having a team to back you up makes it worth it.

One of Anik’s final comments in our interview centered around how to balance school and tennis. “We tell our coaches yeah sure we can practice more, that means we don’t have to study! Jeltje and Kaila are big proponents of that.” A true procrastinating TWAMP at heart.

Thanks to Anik for sitting down to talk with me, and thanks to Tribe tennis for getting us pumped for the spring! Go Tribe!