The No. 39 Wisconsin women’s tennis team will travel to Santa Barbara for spring break, where they will take on the University of Texas at El Paso Miners Monday, March 21. But the Badgers’ California dreamin’ will prove abbreviated as they return to Madison before break’s end to kick off in earnest their Big Ten season with matches against Michigan State and Michigan, Saturday, March 26 and Sunday, March 27, respectively.
Coming off a hard-fought win against the DePaul Blue Demons at home last Saturday, the Badgers venture to the West Coast hoping to garner their seventh win of the season. In the Miners they face a 5-4 squad that has dropped only two of its last seven games, though UTEP is yet to emerge victorious against a ranked opponent.
In Michigan the Badgers face a team ranked just five slots below Wisconsin. Currently 4-6 on the season, the Wolverines have faced two of the same opponents as the Badgers in DePaul and Vanderbilt, garnering similar results to Wisconsin’s effort against each team.
Michigan State currently boasts a 10-game win streak, though the Spartans are scheduled to face off against the Wolverines before heading to Madison in a match that offers no easy indicators.
Sunshine superman: California’s warm weather will provide Wisconsin its first opportunity to play outdoors this season. Anticipating the need to make climate-based adjustments, the Badgers plan to work in multiple practice sessions before taking to the court with UTEP.
“It’s a challenge on these courts particularly, because our courts are pretty quick, so it’s difficult to actually kind of mimic an outdoor situation,” head coach Patti Henderson said in reference to the indoor courts at the Nielsen Tennis Center. “But we’ll do some work where we’re just talking about net height clearance, some different things along those lines, and obviously when we get down to Los Angeles, we’ll practice twice on Saturday and then once on Sunday before we play Monday.”
Further complicating matters for the Badgers, the Miners’ southern locale has allowed them outdoor work for much of the season to date.
“They’ll be used to it,” sophomore Caitlin Burke said. “We’ll get a few days in before the match, so that’ll make a big difference.”
Freshman Chelsea Nusslock agrees that the Miners’ home environment gives them an edge in respect to that portion of the game.
“I think it’s going to be difficult to adjust to playing outside because I know that Texas has been playing outside all of the time,” Nusslock said. “We’ll get to practice a little bit and I think it might be a little hard to get accustomed, but I think that our team can do pretty well with that.”
Madison’s climate also remains an X factor for the Badgers. As the team takes to the court with spring break waning, Wisconsin weather could potentially take a turn for the warmer and allow the squad to utilize its outdoor facilities for the first time this season.
“[There is] probably a 70 percent chance they’re in and a 30 percent chance they’re outside when we play Michigan and Michigan State,” Henderson said.
Rank and file: Despite coming off a win against DePaul and having not lost a match since Feb. 25, the Badgers dropped in the rankings this week, falling from No. 34 to No. 39. This marks the first time in the spring campaign that Wisconsin has seen its rank fall, having previously incrementally graduated from No. 48 to No. 34 through four ranking periods.
But as players’ individual rankings have fluctuated through the season and the team spot has also adjusted, the Badgers have seemed unfazed by such matters, always insisting that their attention remains firmly placed on where the team will sit come season’s end.
“Where we are in the first week of June when the final rankings come out is the ultimate,” Henderson said after the previous batch of rankings was released March 8. “And we’d like to be in the top 25 this year if we can get into the top 25. So we certainly have some matches ahead of us that can allow that to happen, I believe.”
