The Slippery Rock University women’s tennis team is looking forward to bringing an enthusiastic and fresh team to the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference this spring.
Head coach Matt Meredith is ready to take his team of nine girls to the PSAC Championships in April.
Meredith, who is in his 16th season of coaching at the Rock, said that last season was one of the first times that the team was beat out for a spot in the PSAC Championship game.
The team did, however, still get to compete at the NCAA Division II Atlantic Regional game. They fell 2-5 to West Virginia State University.
SRU is currently 2-3 this season with wins over West Chester University and Cheyney University.
“If we keep working hard this semester, I think we will upset some of the teams that have a little more experience than our young team,” senior captain Lauren Coggins said. “Last year we weren’t as successful as we had hoped, so this year I would love to see us bounce back strong.”
Last season, SRU finished with a 12-9 record overall (2-3 PSAC).
Coggins, Samantha Bruggeman, Nikolina Grbac and Sarah Joumond are all seniors and make up the team’s unit of upperclassmen.
Grbac, a transfer from Division One University of New Mexico, starts her first and only season here at the Rock.
“The team is excited to begin this season with Nikolina,” said Meredith. “I’m also looking forward to see how the freshmen progress and help out our team. Overall, I think that the team is moving in the right direction.”
The remaining five members are sophomores Courtney Gallagher and Nicole Sopcak and freshmen Stephanie Fortier, Emily Munson and Kylee Woodman.
The girls have been practicing as a team since last semester and they continued to practice over Winter Break in preparation for the Spring season.
With a young and ambitious group, the women’s tennis team is ready to be competitive in the PSAC this Spring.
They are set to play their first match Feb. 9 at 5:00 p.m. against Carnegie Mellon University.
