Facing second serve on her match-point, Sarah Gealer sent the tennis ball straight into the net to seal a loss.
Gealer then bent over her racket, staring at the ground in frustration. Her Terrapins tennis team had just dropped its second match of the weekend, falling to No. 20 Florida State yesterday, 6-1, just two days after getting shut out, 7-0, against No. 10 Miami.
The Terps (5-12, 0-7 ACC) are now on a six-game losing streak, a stretch that started with a March 17 defeat against William & Mary. They are still winless in conference, too, with their last ACC victory coming more than a year ago.
But there was something different about the team’s customary postgame meeting after yesterday’s match against the Seminoles (12-5, 4-3). Players apologized for their performance, coach Daria Panova said. They admitted to not giving 100 percent.
That discussion came two days after Panova and assistant coach Maros Horny told the Terps they were no longer going to talk after matches. Panova wanted her players to take on more responsibility.
And ending postgame talks wasn’t the only change Panova tried to implement over the weekend. Members of the coaching staff have been courtside with every player throughout the match all year, giving advice during breaks. Yesterday, Panova and her assistants adopted a more hands-off approach. Panova roamed from court to court, checking in on matches and rarely talking to players.
“Basically I keep saying the same thing over and over,” Panova said. “And if they’re not just listening there is no point for coaches to go on the court.”
Gabriela Srodowski’s performance yesterday was a positive, though. She battled back from a one-set deficit in a singles match against Florida State, winning the second set, 7-5, before falling, 6-10, in the third-set super tiebreaker.
Despite losing, the freshman was one of only two Terps to win a singles set this weekend. The other, senior Vroni Van Berlo, earned the only point of the weekend for the Terps with a 7-5, 6-4 win over the nation’s No. 31-ranked player, Florida State’s Daneika Borthwick.
“It’s still a team effort,” Van Berlo said. “Yeah I won, but we didn’t play well as a team.”
If the Terps want to have a realistic shot of meeting their preseason goal of three conference victories, they’ll need to win the majority of their final four conference matches.
But right now, that’s not the Terps’ top priority.
“We need to, first of all, break our losing streak,” Gealer said, “and also get our first win on the road.”
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