Dual matches are underway for the Wright State women’s tennis team after the fall season and winter break, and this past weekend it seemed as if two different teams showed up.
Ball State swept the Raiders 7-0 on Feb. 1. But the team turned around and swept Northern Kentucky two days later by the same score, giving NKU a dose of the medicine WSU received against BSU.
The Raiders sit overall at 2-2 on the season, the only team in the Horizon League to win multiple games so far.
WSU’s head coach Sean McCaffrey said he hopes the team uses the non-conference portion of their schedule to improve before the conference slate of matches begins in late March.
“I think for us it’s about throwing as much as we possibly can at the kids now and seeing how they operate,” McCaffrey said. “If they can gain confidence in some of these matches so that when we get to conference, we’ll play against Milwaukee, Green Bay and all those teams and not feel that our backs are against the wall.”
McCaffrey said his team is “very athletic” and that skillset was used to the team’s advantage during the winter break. A number of players used the time to recover from injuries to get ready for the dual match portion of the schedule.
“We had one woman (Taylor Hines) who had surgery that we didn’t think would come back and play, and she’s now starting,” McCaffrey said. “We thought her career would be done.”
Sophomore Abby Lewis also went down with an injury last fall. Lewis suffered an ACL injury and is out for this season, but plans to return in the coming fall.
McCaffrey said the team’s main weakness is a lack of confidence when WSU squares off with teams who may be better on paper.
“One of the women the other day during a team meeting said sometimes they don’t get confidence until the second or third game in a match, and by that time it could be kind of late,” McCaffrey said.
That confidence will be tested this weekend as the women’s team has three matches in three days against Chicago State, Akron and IPFW at the South Regency Tennis Center in Miamisburg.
