Friday, September 30, 2011

Fall USTA/ITA Regional Starts Tomorrow for Whit Women

Well, we're off today for Salem, OR and the Fall USTA/ITA Regional Championship tournament.

This is a singles and doubles tournament with all of our conference schools competing. I love it as a way to showcase the hard work we've done over the summer and in the fall as well as seeing how we stack up with the conference both in terms of our returners improvement and our new players making their mark on college tennis.

We'll be competing with 8 singles players: Alyssa, Courtney and Morgan Lawless, Emily, Hadley, Olivia, Hannah and Lizzy. First years Maddy Webster and Erin Minuth will debut in doubles.

Alyssa is the #2 seed in singles and teams up with #5 seed Courtney as the #1 seeded doubles team in the draw. Em and Morgan go in as the #6 seed in Doubles and Lizzy and Hannah renew their successful partnership from last spring.

It should be a super fun event with some families and alums in attendance, if you're near Salem, we will play at Willamette and Salem Swim and Tennis if it is dry and the indoor backup is the Courthouse Tennis club.

I'll send as many twitter updates as I can manage (maybe with some help).

More to come as the competition begins!

John

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Another Senior Voted Whittie of the Week

The first couple weeks of fall practice are amazingly exciting and hectic. New players are adjusting to college life and college tennis (and in our case, they are all doing a tremendous job on court and seem to be loving Whitman), returners are honing their games knowing that the Fall USTA/ITA regionals are coming up and that midterms are around the corner and everyone is pushing themselves and the team to be the best physically, mentally and technically that we can be.

It doesn't really matter what time of year it is because week in and week out Emily contributes in so many ways. Off court, she is always leading, having fun and doing things like driving to Friday practice or volunteering her Saturday to help shuttle players for the men's ITA. She's always great on court too, but this week she did an outstanding job staying really focused in singles and doubles, bringing hers and everyone else's level up. Great work as the Whittie of the Week Em!

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Whittie of the Week - Lizzy

Check out this weeks Whittie of the Week. Our weekly award for the Whitman player who has made outstanding team contributions during the week. Nominees are put forth and the team votes on this, and our first week of fall practice we had stellar performances by so many players and and there is great camaraderie, support and leadership on this team so it was super tough to get down to even a few nominees, but Lizzy had a terrific week to nab the first award of the fall, great job Liz!


Wednesday, September 7, 2011

So much going on at Whitman

Sorry for the blog hiatus, but we're back in school, back at practice and so I'll move away from my usual style and give you some bullet points on all that's happening with Whitman Tennis

- School has begun! While summer weather continues and Whitties enjoy being outside, they are also back to work in the classroom. So many players on the team have exciting things to report from the classroom. It was terrific to see returners come back and welcome 5 new first years and see their families in Walla Walla.

- Fall practice has begun! It's so much fun to see everyone back on campus, but better yet, we hit the courts this week for our first practices. There is certainly a lot of work to be done, but I couldn't be more thrilled with both the level of play from everyone for the first couple days and even more for the effort and enthusiasm to be together as a team and work hard to improve our tennis.

- In what is becoming a fall tradition, we went berry picking with the men's team. This is a terrific way to get off campus, see the amazing landscape changes and beauty that are a highlight of living here and just spend time getting to know each other and reconnect after the summer. Some highlights were the hospitality of Biology Professor Delbert Hutchison, Kathleen and the whole family who welcomed us to their home/horse ranch along the Walla Walla river outside Milton-Freewater in Oregon. Another was Coach Jeff's cooking. He has become a dutch oven master and this time prepared chicken and veggie pad thai over the fire in dutch ovens for two whole tennis teams and it was delicious, thanks Jeff! While dinner was cooking, everyone walked up and down the river to find the ripest blackberries to take home, but there were plenty there to do some dutch oven cobblers to finish off the evening eating and hanging out around the fire. Jeff took a ton of pictures that you can view on this link

- I also started a facebook page for the team, and while I'm learning very slowly, I've been able to post some updates and photos for different things there, it is at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Whitman-Womens-Tennis/155654211167580