Serving up success: the rapid rise of NGU’s women’s tennis team
Ava Henderson, Staff Writer
Photo courtesy of Lauren Dendy
While North Greenville University has had a quiet women’s tennis team the last few years, after hiring a new head coach for this season, the team has had a dramatic improvement. They went from being 4-17 only a year ago to having a winning record of 11-7 this season and are still looking for wins.
One thing that helped lead to this improvement was the addition of new head coach Michelle Tease. In her first year, she has led the team to a .500 record in conference play and a winning record overall and still has plenty of time to add wins to that.
Tease said, “Being trusted to lead this team and turn their program around has meant everything to me.”
She loves seeing improvement from the girls and seeing them do things she knows they are capable of and more.
Her goal is to continue improving every game and every season. They strive every practice to be better than they were the practice before, and this can only be done if the team works together to be the best they can be. One way this happens is through team bonding.
Tease said she wants the girls to spend as much time together outside of practice as they do in practice. To do this, the team has started eating dinner together, studying together and doing fun things off campus together to grow them closer as a team.
“Team bonding has helped us be closer as a team which has led to us being a better team overall,” senior Megan Turner said.
As a senior, Turner has seen this team’s turnaround, and she is very proud of the progress they’ve made.
“As someone who’s been on the team for four years now, I can say confidently the improvement has been amazing,” Turner said.
She says this is due to having a solid coach for the first time in her collegiate career.
“Having a consistent coach allows us time to improve at practice and ask questions so we know what we need improvement on,” she said.
Now that they have a head coach that is solely dedicated to helping them win matches, they are able to practice more often, because their coach has more time for them.
Freshman Lauren Harrelson said, “As someone who has only been on the team a year, I am so thankful I came into a program that wants to be better than they were before.”
She said loves the closeness of the team and hopes that by her senior year, she can say she has seen improvement from herself and the team.
In only one season, this team went only four wins all season to triple that, and they are just getting started. It’s all thanks to their new head coach, who wants to help them be better every day.
