By Laura Clark

Published: April 2, 2008

The singles lineup: 1, Katherine James, sophomore; 2, Meg Linen, sophomore; 3, Katherine Turner, junior; 4, Gabi Dennis, senior; 5, Rachel Mahler, junior; 6, Jordan Orme, freshman
The doubles lineup: 1, James/Linen; 2, Dennis/Mahler; 3, Turner/Orme
The latest: The Nelson girls are 0-2, with loses to Wilson Memorial (0-9) and Buckingham (6-3). In the Buckingham match, Dennis and Mahler won in singles, and Orme and Turner won in doubles.

Three questions for coach Weston Mathews:
Q: What characterizes your team this year?
A: We’re really young this year. Our only returning player from the top six is Gabi Dennis. And Rachel Mahler, who played on the team last year but was not in the top six. Really, we’re building from a lot of players who haven’t played before or who were on the team but are moving up.
At No. 1 and No. 2 we have two sophomores. Katherine James is in her second year of playing but she’s improved a great deal from last year. Although she’s lost the two matches she played this year, she worked hard over the summer and improved, and I look for her to improve a lot over the season if she can develop her mental game and get her confidence up. It’s a tall order, but she’s the kind of person who is very, very tough and is not one to back down from a challenge. Her friend Meg is at No. 2. She was a freshman last year and was on the team, but is now starting. She has been working really hard and is not one to back down from a challenge. I’m looking for a lot of improvement from them this season.
At No. 3 we have Katherine Turner, who has been on the team since last year, and is again starting because of her improvement. She’s got a tough order because she’s playing really for the first time as a starter. She hustles a lot. She’s probably our most aggressive player on the court, in terms of her footwork.
Our No. 6 seed is a freshman who has never played before and shows great promise. Her name’s Jordan Orme, and she’s a natural athlete who moves very quickly around the court and picked up basically the forehand/backhand strokes very quickly. She’s been a real positive member of the team. She’s very tenacious.
We don’t have a whole lot of depth, because the other girls on the team are in the same situation Jordan’s in: they’re freshman and they’re starting to learn how to play. We have freshman and one sophomore that are reserve players. But they as a team are a very kind group of girls. They’re very team oriented. We don’t have any divas on the team. Although I wish at times they were almost a little more mean and aggressive. They’re very ladylike, but I need them to get tougher. I hope that happens. I couldn’t ask for a greater group of girls personality-wise.

Q: What kind of goals are you setting this season?
A: Our short-term goal is to have everybody improve as an individual to move their feet more, as a technical goal. Footwork is going to be really important. And gaining consistency, getting one more ball back than the other person is like a mantra for me, at any level of the game that’s the object of the game.
As a team goal, I’d like to see us focus more in matches on each ball. We sometimes have a tendency to get distracted as individuals and sometimes as a team. So we need to be able to focus more of our energy on every moment in the match. And that comes with experience. I guess being more mentally tough because we have lost some matches this year already when we were up and we didn’t close out.
I (told the team) I would always close my eyes at night before I’d go to bed, and I would imagine there was somebody across from me playing tennis and that would help me get to sleep. I still sometimes do it, it’s weird. I said, “You guys can try it, and you have to keep it going, almost like counting sheep where you’re hitting a forehand, and they’re hitting a backhand. And then you’re hitting a backhand crosscourt and they’re going up the line and you just make lines the whole time. But you’re just focusing on that ball going back and forth.” It’s actually a great exercise. Stay in the moment, that’s what a lot of them need to learn.
We don’t really have a leader on our team yet, and my policy is not to have captains, ever, on our team. But I always like to see somebody emerge as a leader. I don’t like to call them a captain, but we don’t have any natural leader yet. I just don’t think that there’s really any place for a captain on a team. Why would it be a team sport if you have one person that was more special than the others, that had some special ‘C’ on their uniform (like) in hockey? How could it truly be a team if someone was designated as different from the rest? But I still think leadership is important, and there has to be some natural leadership. It’s not necessarily going to come from the same person each time. We’re so young, and we’re so unsure of ourselves, we haven’t gotten to that point yet where some group has emerged as leaders.

Q: What advice do you often give to your young players?
A: I give them two things. I don’t try and complicate things too much. It’s usually like a technical suggestion and then a mental one. The technical, for example, might be in doubles they’re not hitting their returns cross-court. Or they’re floating the ball too much over the middle. Just something for them to work on. A mental thing is usually along the lines of you have to serve and be in the moment by focusing on one ball at a time. You need to go out there and anticipate that one ball, not where your parents are, not where she is, not even where your partner is, just the ball. I know it’s that corny Caddyshack be-the-ball thing, right? But that’s one of my favorite movies. I try telling them just one ball at a time.
My whole thing is (in doubles) you’ve got to communicate on every point being positive for the other person. At a bare minimum what you’re supposed to be communicating to them is, “I’m here. I’m your partner.” And pumping each other up. It’s mostly being supportive of each other for right now because girls are just starting to play doubles don’t naturally understand to use that time in between points to build each other up, to come together as a team in that way.
Then once they get to that point, they’ve got to start court positioning. Then by the time they’re seniors they’ll be able to use hand signals on serves, ducking, going up the middle, there’s all sorts of things they’ll be able to do, but we’re not there yet. They’re still learning.