By Nicholas Moreano
The Iowa women’s tennis team is coming off impressive wins over Iowa State and Montana on Sunday. The Hawkeyes will look to continue their winning streak in their second two-fer of the season on Saturday against Western Michigan at noon and Marquette at 5 p.m. in Milwaukee.
For the Hawkeyes, starting the season undefeated has been a common theme the past two years. In the previous two seasons, under head coach Katie Dougherty, the Hawkeyes started off 6-0 and in 2014-2015 started 4-0; both undefeated seasons came to an end at the hands of Oregon.
The Broncos will try to play the part of Oregon, coming in with a 5-2 record and a three-game winning streak after a convincing 7-0 victory against Illinois-Chicago on Feb. 5. This weekend will be the first time for the Hawkeyes and Broncos to meet. In for the second match, the Hawkeyes are familiar with the Golden Eagles, leading in the all-time series, 17-2. The most recent matchup between the two schools was last season, when the Hawkeyes won, 6-1.
To go along with an undefeated record, six Hawkeyes are also undefeated in singles: freshman Elise van Heuvelen, sophomore Kristen Thoms, juniors Zoe Douglas, Montana Crawford, and Anastasia Reimchen, and senior Aimee Tarun.
Even though the Hawkeyes are perfect on the season, head coach Sasha Schmid would like to see her team become more aggressive when it comes to doubles.
“I think there are few chances that we could take for just moving on the ball,” she said. “A higher first-serve percentage will help us establish offense a little earlier in doubles.”
One of the undefeated Hawkeyes who didn’t play in last week’s matches because of a back injury, Tarun took advantage of watching her teammates from the elevated seating area. She said she saw a lot of energy last week and would like to see that continue. She also noted that the team can continue to improve.
“Sometimes, it can be hard after winning the first set to keep your foot on the gas to win the second set,” Tarun said. “So just making sure we don’t let up and let the other team into it in the second set.”
For assistant coach Ruth Seaborne, one of the reasons the Hawkeyes haven’t let their opponents back into matches and are undefeated is due to their willingness to buy into the program.
“We created a philosophy, we made mission statement, we got all the girls on the same page,” Seaborne said.
The page that Seaborne mentioned is how the team has progressed into playing as one cohesive unit.
Seaborne sees that especially in the tough matches, where the women not only fight on to win for themselves, but for their teammates.
For the Hawkeyes to continue to have success, they must stick to that philosophy and mission statement if they want to be seen as a legitimate force this season.