Freshman Georgina Thomson had plenty of time to cheer on her teammates in the Ball State University women's tennis team's 7-0 sweep of Wright State University on Wednesday.
Thomson and partner Katherine Rist were the first winners of the doubles matches with an 8-1 victory. Thomson then breezed through her number six singles match with a 6-1, 6-1 win at the Muncie YMCA Tennis Center.
"In the doubles, Katherine and I both played well enough and convincing enough to get the win," said Thomson, who moved to 4-0 in match play this season. "In the singles, I just seemed pretty comfortable out there on the court."
Even though Ball State (2-0) won the three doubles matches by a combined score of 24-5, coach Kathy Bull said there is still room for improvement in her team's doubles play.
"[The doubles play] was good enough to get the job done, but it wasn't spectacular," Bull said. "We were a little bit flat going into it, but we got what we needed to get done, and I would like to move a little bit better."
Wright State coach Nate Reinhart said his younger players struggled in their first match of the season.
"We have a young team, and our seniors went three sets and competed at a pretty high level with two of Ball State's better players," Reinhart said. "Our younger players had a little tougher time. [Ball State is] a strong team, has lots of guts, and are very well coached."
In the number one and three singles matches both went to third set tie-breakers.
Sophomore Sophie Quist won 4-6, 6-3 (10-5) at number one singles, while senior Jennifer Pollack claimed a 6-1, 5-7 (10-5) victory at number three singles.
"We were struggling a little bit in the front four, but what I liked was that everybody remained coachable and positive and we made some adjustments," Bull said. "The ability to be able to come back and not give up to me is something that you cannot give athletes. I think [Wright State] might have done us a little favor by pushing us to our limits and that was good; I really liked the way that we recovered from those type of things."
The Cardinals now have a rare 10-day break until their next match against DePaul University on Feb. 2, an ideal opportunity to evaluate the player's performance, Bull said.
"We're going to probably step up their conditioning a little bit and do a little bit more specialized one-on-one work now that we have two matches with some information that we can look at as people develop some habits," Bull said. "And see if we can just keep getting stronger in doubles."
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