The women’s tennis team traveled to Missouri for a tournament last weekend, according to Blugold Athletics. Despite losing both matches, members of the team said they felt good about their performance.

Lindsey Henderson, a fourth-year human resource management and marketing and analytics student, said that she thinks they played the best they have all year.

Henderson said she grew up playing tennis. She started in the fourth grade because her sisters played and she liked to copy what they did. She said she loved tennis in high school and decided to continue it into college.

Henderson said that she prefers playing doubles over singles, and enjoys going up and hitting volleys. Doubles went especially well for her and her partner.

“I’ve always loved being on a team,” Henderson said.

She said that she enjoys how tennis is both an individual and a team sport.

Henderson said that this was the best match the team had so far, and everyone had improved from earlier in the season. The Eau-Claire women’s tennis team played two nationally-ranked teams, she said.

Henderson said the team was excited going into the match, ready to play some tough teams. She said that she enjoys playing teams she knows will be good competition.

She said the team still needed to work on little things and on keeping up the intensity, but overall felt that the matches were a success.

Brian Biernat, tennis head coach, said he started playing tennis in the eighth grade because it gave him something to do in between hockey seasons. He continued to play over the summer, and he played from 1976 to 1980 on the University of Minnesota’s tennis team.

Biernat said that the team knew the tournament would offer good competition, which prompted the team to talk about mindset. He said he told the team to believe that team could be beaten, regardless of their rank.

To prepare, the team upped the intensity of their exercises. They upped the amount of time they practiced running and hitting, and worked on mid-court play, getting high percentages of serves in and working on how many balls they could keep in, according to Biernat.

Biernat said they aimed to make the other team uncomfortable, and felt that they succeeded at that.

He said that the teams had never competed against each other before and did not know how each other played, so they worked to find out what the other team was doing against them.

Henderson said that she thinks the match helped the team gain confidence because they played so well, especially going into the team’s final conference tournament in Whitewater in two weeks. 

The WIAC tournament includes four teams: UW-Whitewater, UW-Stevens Point, UW-Lacrosse and UW-Eau Claire, according to Biernat. 

Biernat said the match was down to the wire, and that everyone was trying their hardest. He said they have been playing a lot of really good DIII teams.

Biernat said it was important that the team had a good breakfast and a long warm-up so that they could play their best.

“It was really great how they competed really hard, and they did a good job of adjusting,” he said.

Price can be reached at [email protected].