After only a few weeks of training together as a group, Florida’s women’s tennis team will split up to compete in fall’s season-opening tournaments hosted in North Carolina and Rhode Island this weekend.
Head coach Roland Thornqvist will travel with seniors Brooke Austin and Peggy Porter, as well as freshman Victoria Emma to Cary, North Carolina, for the three-day Duke Bonk Invite. The Gators will face competition from teams including LSU and Georgia Tech.
Assistant coach Dave Balogh, on the other hand, will travel with seniors Anna Danilina and Josie Kuhlman as well as freshman Katie Kubicz to Newport, Rhode Island, for the three-day Hall of Fame/ITA Grass Court Invitational. Florida will compete against teams such as LSU, Princeton and North Carolina.
Despite the fact the team is being split in half to compete this weekend, the tournaments will be UF’s first official match of play since the team won a national championship back in May.
“I think we have digested the championship by now and everybody’s super focused on the upcoming year,” Thornqvist said. “I don’t think that any of the players were ‘satisfied’ with what they achieved individually last year, and that’s a nice building block upon which we can create a whole new scenario for this year.”
Thornqvist is also pleased with the progress that some of his players made individually while working over summer.
“Anna has come back the best…She hits the ball harder and played more tournaments in the summer than she normally has, so she’s certainly ready for her senior year,” Thornqvist said. “As for the returning players, I’m real pleased with what they were up to over the summer.”
But to an extent, Florida’s preparation for the tournaments in North Carolina and Rhode Island has been anything but ordinary.
Only four weeks into the fall semester, there have already been some obstacles. Hurricane Irma impacted practices as well as a new NCAA rule stating that athletes must get at least an additional 14 days off from playing and practicing during the regular academic year.
“Most of those days, I actually built into the beginning of the season,” Thornqvist said. “So, some of the players I’ve only seen hit maybe three or four days. We’re sort of going in blind really.”
Thornqvist said the part he is most looking forward to in the tournaments is the opportunity to compete again.
“It’s just great to have some data and create a plan for the next couple of weeks,” Thornqvist said. “Playing tournaments is so much more fun than spending a weekend home practicing.”
The goal for the fall season is quite simple: “Become a better team and better players by the conclusion of the fall,” Thornqvist said.
“With six players, I think it’s going to be kind of nice because we can really spend a lot of time with them and playing in these tournaments is a big part of that,” Thornqvist said. “We just basically wanna feel like we’ve improved at the conclusion of the fall.”
You can follow Mari Faiello on Twitter @faiello_mari, and contact her at mfaiello@alligator.org.
UF's Anna Danilina returns a ball during Florida's 6-1 win over USF on Jan. 27, 2016, at the Ring Tennis Complex.
