On Saturday, Sep. 21 (do you remember…), Lawrence Women’s Tennis prepared to face both the University of Wisconsin–Stout and the University of Dubuque at home in a double-header, with matches starting at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. respectively.
The first match for the Vikings came against the University of Wisconsin–Stout Blue Devils, who were looking to rebound after coming off of a five-match losing streak. Meanwhile, the Vikings entered this match already tied in match wins compared to last season, this only being just past the halfway mark in the 2024 season. Momentum was already in favor of the Vikings.
Matches got underway at 9:07 a.m., with the three doubles matches kicking the day off. For those unfamiliar with NCAA collegiate tennis, three doubles matches are played to determine who wins the “doubles point.” Instead of matches counting as one point each, whichever team wins the majority of the doubles matches will be awarded just one point. This varies from previous years at the Division III level, where each doubles match would count individually, so in theory one team could take a 3-0 lead heading into the singles matches and only need to win two out of the six singles matches to clinch the victory for the team. In other words, up until this year, a team needed to win five out of nine matches to get the win. Now, with the new doubles rules, a team needs to essentially win four out of the seven available points (since the three doubles matches combine into just one point).
Lawrence doubles started off slow, but the comeback was just the opposite. Sophomore Tess McGlenn and first-year Clara Hills kicked off the scoring with a solid 6-3 win at number two doubles.
“I think sometimes it takes Tess and I a little bit of time to get to the point where we’re hitting our shots confidently, because doubles comes first, and there’s a lot of moving parts, and we don’t warm up with the other team for collegiate tennis, so you have no idea how they’re going to play,” Hills said. “Once we got into the groove, that comeback came pretty quickly, and we stayed really positive and were hyping each other up the entire time.”
Shortly after, sophomore Maddie Bublik and first-year Rachael Pofahl lost a nail-biter 6-7 (4) in a tiebreaker at number three doubles. That left the number one doubles duo of sophomore Logan Kane and junior Anna Vanden Acker to bring home the doubles point and give Lawrence the advantage going into the singles matches. Kane and Vanden Acker went down 1-4 early but were never far off from winning each of the first five games. After bringing the gap down to 2-4, the Blue Devils struck back to take a 5-2 lead in the set and proceeded to go up 40-30 the next game, setting themselves up with two match points (collegiate tennis is played with no advantage, meaning if the scoreline goes to deuce, or 40-40, the next point determines who wins the game). Kane and Vanden Acker held strong, saving both match points to force the match to con- tinue. But the Blue Devils promptly took a 40-15 lead the next game. Yet again, the Vikings’ number one doubles team showed off why they are number one not just in the lineup, but in mentality. They saved three more match points to win the game and put themselves just one game down at 4-5. Stout’s number one team seemed rattled, and Kane and Vanden Acker took full advantage, winning the set 7-5 and clinching the doubles point for the Vikings.
“For Logan and I, [the goal was] don’t put so much pressure on ourselves,” Vanden Acker said. “I think we stayed very confident in ourselves and our abilities and just [focused on] one point at a time. That was big for us.”
The singles matches were much less stressful for the home crowd, but still just as exciting. Lawrence’s number one through number four singles all won in straight, mostly uncontested sets to eventually result in a 5-2 triumph for the Vikings, thus surpassing the number of total wins the Vikings had in 2023.
“My singles match was pretty fast, so it felt good to just kind of cruise through that, and I felt good about how I was playing,” Vanden Acker said. “At the end of the day, [I] felt very good.”
And fast that match was! It even appeared Vanden Acker decided to open a bakery during her just 45-minute-long match after handing her opponent a breadstick and a bagel with a commanding 6-1, 6-0 win. Hills proceeded to win her match 6-2, 6-3 before Kane decided to gift her opponent with a breadstick of her own in her 6-3, 6-1 win, which clinched the overall victory for the Vikings. McGlenn then also tacked on a win of her own to cap off a successful first match of the day for the team.
Lawrence’s players got a short break before returning to the courts to face the University of Dubuque Spartans. Anticipation was high for this match after the Spartans eased their way past the Blue Devils with a 6-1 triumph.
“I anticipated the second team to be a bit better, and I was noticing that in the scores starting off with doubles […] we were pretty close,” Hills said. “I was anticipating a more difficult singles match as well and kind of trying to pace myself so that I had enough energy to get through that second singles match.”
But clouds loomed overhead. Doubles got underway briefly with all three of the courts in tightly contested matches, but then the rain started to fall. There was hope that the matches might resume, but the downpour continued, and the match was ultimately called off. With that being said, although the double-header never came to fruition, the amount of time and effort put into preparing to play twice in a day cannot be forgotten.
“I feel like fueling correctly in between the two matches and making sure I’m getting enough carbs and proteins so that I can actually function in the second match [is important],” Vanden Acker said.
Head Coach Eric Schact ‘90 echoed the importance proper nutrition can have on an athlete.
“We do have a nutritionist [who] we meet with as a team and [who]’s available for players indi- vidually [who] we lean on heavily for crafting a nutrition plan for our athletes,” Schact said. “So that’s how we get our bodies ready.”
The preparation doesn’t stop there, though. Players must be then mentally and physically prepared to exert themselves and perform at a high level twice a day, something rarely ever seen in other collegiate sports. But the team essentially started preparing for this moment from the moment they arrived on campus.
“It’s a big advantage with the women’s team because we get to have about three weeks before the season starts that we are having double practices,” Schact said. “So I feel that right from the jump with the women’s team, we’re able to say this is how we prepare for those days when we are going to have to play two matches in a day.”
And that preparation paid off. Not only did the team pick up the win against UW–Stout, but the players were also confident they would have gone two-for-two on the day and beaten Dubuque had the matches been completed.
“I think it would have been another dub,” Vanden Acker said.
The Vikings will prepare to go 2-0 on the road in another double-header this Saturday, Sep. 28 against Monmouth College and Illinois College in their third and fourth matches of conference play. Let’s just hope that this time the rain doesn’t disrupt Lawrence from storming to another victory.