The women’s tennis team will travel to Illinois this weekend to compete in the ITA Midwest Region Championship.
Captains Katya Mirnova and Jessica Seyferth, along with Hannah Berner, will compete in the tournament at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. The ITA Midwest Alternate Region Event will be held at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Ill., where Aleksandra Markovic, Angela Chupa, Lauren Gruber and Kathleen Saltarelli will all be competing.
According to Mirnova, the regional tournament will present the girls with an opportunity to face some tough competition early in the season.
“It’s always a difficult tournament; a lot of good girls are coming, but good competition as well,” Mirnova said. “I feel like I’m playing well right now, so I think it’s going to be a good test for me to see where I stand, especially against girls that I will be playing for the rest of the season.”
Four Big Ten schools are entered in the tournament so far — Ohio State, Northwestern, Indiana, and Purdue — so the Badgers will have a chance to size up their competition for the regular season in the spring. However, head coach Brian Fleishman does not rely on performances in the winter to suggest what will happen in the more competitive spring.
“I think if we do well [this weekend], it will build confidence,” Fleishman said. “We’ll get a good look at some of the players. We haven’t seen some of the freshmen from Big Ten schools, so we’ll have a better idea of what we’re going into when we play them come springtime. So much can change between now and then, though. It really isn’t a good indicator, but it’s always good to see our competition early on.”
Seyferth is enthusiastic about this weekend’s competition. After going 1-2 in her singles matches at their last tournament — the Wildcat Invitational — she hopes to better her performance in her upcoming matches, particularly in the singles portion.
“I’ve done really well so far in doubles this fall,” Seyferth said. “I definitely want to improve on my singles, and I definitely feel good going into this weekend. I’m hoping that Hannah, Katya and I can do some damage.”
Berner also looks to improve this weekend after losing to a Northwestern freshman in a tiebreak in the third set of the Wildcat Invitational’s semi-finals.
“It was a hard-fought tournament to get to the semi-finals, and I just couldn’t pull it out in the end,” Berner said. “I’d love to get some revenge.”
Even with the team’s early struggles, the Badgers have been supportive of each other despite not performing up to their standards. According to Seyferth, success at the end of the fall season could lead to stronger play in the spring.
“The team definitely started out on the right foot right away,” Seyferth said. “We all mesh together well and have good team chemistry, which helps a lot with having the season start off well.”
The Regional Championship — one of the bigger fall events — has an interesting process of deciding who will be invited to play. Each coach submits a list to the Regional Committee ranking their players one to seven or one to eight, depending on how many girls they have on their team.
“We submit a list of players in rank order on how they’re performing or how we think they’re actually hitting the ball, not necessarily based on results,” Fleishman said.
Coaches rank the girls based on a relative individual performance rather than results because some players compete in higher flights than others in tournaments, Fleishman added. Thus, comparing results is not a good indicator of whether they have been playing better or worse than one of their teammates. Based on the coaches’ rankings, the Regional Committee decides who will be entered into the tournament.
For freshmen like Berner, the tournament marks the first major event of their college careers. While the more competitive season doesn’t start for another few months, however, the team is still excited for the opportunity to compete with tough opponents.
“It’s my first Regional,” Berener said, “so I’d love to represent Wisconsin well.”
