The Observer, April 25, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 26
Women are in UAA's cellar
The women's tennis team is making progress. They're getting more consistent with their strokes and they're lasting longer in volleys as their schedule has become more and more difficult. "They're definitely better than they were at the beginning of the spring," said interim head coach Dan Palmer, whose day job is coaching the men's soccer team. "I hope that they'll continue to improve under the new coach next year," he said.
But their improvements were not enough to be competitive in the UAA, which held its conference tournament last weekend in St. Louis. The box score certainly makes it look like the ladies were fighting lions with a switch. The Case women finished last in the eight-strong UAA.
Last Friday, the women lost to a fourth-ranked Emory team, 0-9. The only match that was close was No. 2 singles, where Case's Marta Worwag made Sabra Rogers work for the win. The first game necessitated a tiebreaker, which Worwag lost 0-7.
On Saturday morning, the women were up against the Judges of Brandeis University. They fell, 0-5. After Brandeis won the first five matches, the remaining four went unfinished; the Judges already had a majority.
The afternoon match was only a little different from the rest of the weekend. The Spartans lost to Rochester, 0-9 in the tournament's seventh-place match. Worwag played decently; however, she fell 3-6, 4-6 to Colleen Cross. Sophomore Jennifer Clever had the closest match of the morning. She fell 3-6, 5-7 to Rochester's Diane Samuels. Most of the other games were 0-6, 1-6, and all the doubles were lost by 1-8 or 0-8 margins.
Emory went on to win the conference championship with an 8-1 victory over Carnegie Mellon. Brandeis took fifth.
"The conference is very talented. We were overmatched. The girls competed as well as they have all year," said Palmer. Though the team's matches are over for the year, Palmer's job isn't complete. Next week he'll be meeting with players to get feedback on what worked and what didn't to provide insight for the team's next coach. Palmer and his squad will also discuss their strengths and weaknesses as players when each player meets with her coach.
Only six women are on the team while the usual complement is around twice that. Experience was an issue this year. The women, who finished the year with a 2-11 record, went to St. Louis with only two players that had been to the conference championships before.
One definite improvement in this year's team is the morale. At the end of last year, 24 players signed their name to a letter sent to then-interim president Gregory Eastwood demanding that their coach at the time, Nancy Rahn, be fired for incompetence and falsifying her CV. When their demands weren't met, the team quit.
The men's championships begin today at Emory. They took seventh last year after beating Rochester 6-0 in the seventh place match. Football coach Greg Debeljak serves as the interim coach for the men's team.
