Tennis team finishes season with a win over Central

October 9th, 2009 | By Que Newbill | Section: Sports

The Grinnell Women’s Tennis team remains untouchable after consistent sets of stellar double and singles performances.

The past Wednesday, the Grinnell Pioneers fended off Central College at Darby to rally for a 5-4 victory. This dual match brought a close to their regular playing season.

“I feel good and I am happy that we did it,” Jill Akiyama ’10 said. “It’s always a little nervous for all of us.” 

The Pioneers held off the Central Dutchwomen with 4-0 singles run to finish out the match.

“It was an amazing match, we were down 4-1 at one point and then we came back to win 5-4,” Elizabeth Montgomery’11 said. “The two last sets went to tie breakers so it was really dramatic and every one ran over to the courts and congratulated the last girls off. It was a great team moment.”

Last weekend on the road, they handed both north divisional leaders St. Norbert and Beloit s losses, 5-4 for St. Norbert and for 6-3 Beloit. A week prior, the Grinnell women finished out divisional play and made a clean swept of the competition. After a complete shutout of Monmouth, 9-0, the netters defeated Lake Forest College 7-2 and finished off Illinois College 8-1 in a swift victory. Their win over Lake Forest secured their seventh consecutive Midwest Conference South Division title.

“It was a great weekend for us, especially playing without one of our better players,” Head Coach Andy Hamilton said. “The win [over Lake Forest] is a good testament to the fact we have some depth in our program.”

The strength of this team has been their ability to adapt to any line-up throughout the season.  

 “This season every player in their position has tried to be accountable for their positions,” Coach Hamilton said. “Each of the victories, it has come from different people in different positions, in tennis it is sometimes about match-ups, we have been able to use our positive match ups for some victories.”

“We are all pulling the win at different points of the line up,” Akiyama added.

Throughout the season, Hamilton has been proud of how the team competed.

“I am incredibly pleased that this group of women have a been able to bring their level of play up and what’s most exciting is we are not relying on one individual, all the individuals are working hard on their own performance which collectively makes us a pretty good team” Hamilton said.

Going into the Midwest Conference championships, the women netters rank first in the south and with a 14-2 as their season record. St. Norbert, the second ranked team from the North division, is their first opponent.  Championship play begins Friday, Oct. 16 in Rockford ill.

“I think we can do it,” Montgomery’11 said. “I think we are really confident, we have played a lot of these teams before and we have done well. We will have our work set out for us, but I think we can definitely pull it out successful with sass.”