After blazing through the regular season and Conference USA Championships, the No. 23 SMU women’s tennis team (27-2) will travel to Waco next week to face No. 39 Texas A&M (14-10) in the first round of the 2009 NCAA Championships.
The Mustangs hold a 14-11 advantage in the all-time series against the Aggies, though A&M has won each of the last five meetings.
The winner will advance to the second round and take on the winner between No. 4 Baylor (24-4) and University of Texas-Arlington Mavericks (18-6).
“I’m really excited about this,” said head coach Lauren Longbotham-Meisner. “[Texas A&M] is someone that we haven’t played this year, and I think we match up really well with them … It’s like little SMU going up against the Big 12.”
But Longbotham-Meisner does not place added significance on the upcoming games.
“What we’re trying to do is take the emphasis off the opponent,” she said. “We have to play our game and our style, and if we do that we’ll come up with a win.”
Freshman Marta Lesniak leads the Mustangs at the No. 1 singles spot, compiling a 13-1 record since joining the lineup in midseason. She is currently the highest-ranked C-USA player, coming in at No. 59 nationally, according to the latest Intercollegiate Tennis Association rankings.
Fellow freshman Aleksandra Malyarchikova tallied a 13-0 record at the Nos. 2 and 3 spots, while senior Kseniia Tokarieva is a perfect 15-0 at No. 6.
On Wednesday it was announced that Lesniak and Malyarchikova joined senior Natalia Bubien on the All-Conference USA First Team. This marks Bubien’s third consecutive selection to the C-USA First Team.
Junior Nicole Briceño was named to the All-Conference Third Team after amassing a record of 6-1 at the Nos. 1 and 3 singles spots.
“SMU is very strong up top in their lineup,” Texas A&M head coach Bobby Kleinecke said on AggieAthletics.com. “They are very good at that 1-2-3 area.”
In doubles, Lesniak and Malyarchikova teamed up for a 13-0 record and, according to a C-USA press release, “were a unanimous selection as the league’s top doubles tandem.” The pair is ranked No. 32 nationally.
Though freshman made their presence felt on the court this season, Longbotham-Meisner continues to credit her seniors their leadership and ability to stay positive despite injuries and administrative turnover the last four years.
Sophomores Elzé Potgieter and Morgan Frank lead the A&M singles charge with records of 13-9 and 17-7 at Nos. 1 and 2, respectively.
Of the Mustangs, coach Kleinecke said, “It’s definitely somebody that we are excited about playing … It’s a match where everybody is going to have to come out and be ready to play.”
Should SMU defeat the Aggies Saturday, the team will likely face the Baylor Lady Bears Sunday afternoon.
Since finishing the 2003-04 season at No. 45 with a 13-11 record, Baylor has put together an incredible five-year span in which head coach Joey Scrivano has led the team to a 132-24 record, ranking in the Top 10 three of the last four years.
The possibility of facing the No. 4 Lady Bears so early in the tournament does not seem to faze coach Longbotham-Meisner.
“Why not go against one of the best in the country?” she said. “You’re going to at one point and time.
“I have tremendous respect for Joey Scrivano,” she continued, “and I have tremendous respect for the program and what they’ve built. To me as a coach it’s a great inspiration just to see what they’ve done.”
Longbotham-Meisner, in her third year as the Mustangs’ head coach, has accumulated an overall record of 57-17. After an injury-plagued 2007-08 season in which SMU went 11-10 and finished at No. 75, the team bounced back to set school records this year for wins in a season (27) as well as consecutive victories (17).
The native of Groesbeck, Texas, sees the trip to Baylor as a personal homecoming of sorts.
“I grew up about 30 minutes outside of Waco,” she said, “so to me it feels like I’m going back home, and I know we’ll have a lot of support there.”
As for the week leading up to the first and second rounds of the NCAA Championships, Longbotham-Meisner said her team will practice, but not at the grueling pace maintained throughout the regular season.
“I think it’s a combination of keeping yourself stretched and not burned out, and then working on the essentials,” she said. “It’s more specific based on each player [and] getting really confident in our shots.”
First serve against the Aggies is set for 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 9, at the Baylor Tennis Center. If the Mustangs defeat both Texas A&M and their second-round opponent, they will move on to the team championships, to be held May 14-19 at the George P. Mitchell Tennis Center in College Station.
“There’s nothing that we’re going to do in the next two weeks that we haven’t been doing all year,” Longbotham-Meisner said. “To us it’s just one more match.”
