Jan. 23, 2013

TUCSON, Ariz. -

Hey Wildcat Fans!

Your Arizona Women’s Tennis team had a great start of the season by beating NAU and UC Davis, and now we are ready to go our first road trip to Texas.

Just a quick note for the fans, there is a little change in doubles rules. Instead of playing a tiebreak at 8-8, the tiebreak will now be played when it’s 7-7.

Secondly, for a trial period there will be no no-ad scoring, meaning at deuce the returning team chooses which side they want to play the deciding point. Again, this is a trial period and a decision will be made after a few matches as to whether they decide to keep the rule change.

After a great dinner at the Abbey on Friday night, the CATS were ready for their first match against NAU. Everyone seemed a little tired at the start but that’s normal because it was the first match of the season, as well as the first performances for our freshies: Inge Hendricks from the Netherlands, and Shayne Austin from California.

With the great team combo of our transfer Kiki (Akilah James) and our Irish junior Susan Mc Rann the “bagel-score” was immediately on the scoreboard. They played really well and won 8-0!

A little after their win, our great Freshie Shayne and our solid No. 1 Lacey Smyth also won their match, allowing the CATS to take the doubles point. Unfortunately, Inge and I lost our first doubles in a tie-breaker, but were not affected because we played well in singles.  

After winning the doubles point, the CATS took their lead into singles. Everyone seemed really excited for their first singles match and we took care of business by winning 6-1!

After the match, we were invited to the Alumni dinner, where we were able to meet the former tennis players who represented the U of A before we got here. It’s always nice to have an input of their life/tennis experiences as a wildcat and to see how they nowadays are still die hard Wildcat fans!

I just wanted to say a special thanks to our former wildcat tennis players as well as to the great organizers for this event.

The win against NAU definitely gave us confidence to take that over the next day against a good UC Davis team.

This time, we came out stronger in our doubles and we won the doubles in all 3 positions. Feeling confident after the doubles, the Wildcats brought their enthusiastic team spirit over in the singles. The stands were filled and there was a constant cheering of “GO CATS”.

Our transfer from Brooklyn Kiki, (you hear her shouting from miles away), created a loud and cheerful atmosphere at the U of A tennis courts this past weekend! The CATS did a great job and ended up with another score of 6-1.  

After this first weekend, we as a team agreed that there is always room for improvement in doubles, but overall we all looked solid and we all know how to get our jobs done on the court.

This Thursday, we will go on our first team road trip to Texas, where we will play No. 12 Texas A&M and Minnesota. I will keep you all posted about our results and our fun moments that we will have on our trip! Always fun with the CATS!:)

Also, if you want to have a closer view in the world of your Wildcats, you can go to the Facebook page Arizona Women’s Tennis and the Twitter @ArizonaWTennis and you will find great pictures of your cats, videos, and much more…

Thank you all for your great support and I will keep you updated!

BEAR DOWN CATS!