The Terrapin’s women’s tennis coach Martin Novak is as excited as he’s been all season going into today’s match against No. 9 Duke.
According to their coach, the Terps have played some of their best tennis of the season this past week and are both eager and prepared to take on one of the nation’s best on their home court.
Following a close 4-3 loss to No. 56 Penn on Saturday, the Terps rebounded in what Novak said was a very promising win over Old Dominion on Sunday, 5-2.
In that match, the Terps dug themselves a hole and went into the singles matches needing some big wins. They got just that and then some, routing Old Dominion 5-1 in the singles portion of the match and claiming their second victory of the season.
Building on the momentum started with Sunday’s win, the coach called his team’s Tuesday practice the best of the year, and added that he feels his team is ready to take on the challenge that is the highly skilled Blue Devils.
Novak expects his team to step up to the plate and give their all in their first ACC match of the season.
“We talked about what it takes to step up to a challenge,” Novak said. “You have to accept the challenge and can’t have an underdog mentality going in to the match.”
Novak admitted to the Terps being heavy underdogs but offered the reason for the team’s early up-and-down performances on spotty play. In order to compete with the best, Novak said, his team needs everyone to come together and play as a solid unit.
“To beat a team like Duke, where we’re underdogs, we all need to play well,” Novak said. “We can beat any team on any given occasion, but we can’t just play well spot-wise. We’ve got to play well at every position.”
To beat a team of Duke’s stature, the Terps will need to get leadership, maturity and solid play from junior co-captain Michal Amir, as well as solid play from all six positions. Freshman Karin Lundmark and sophomore Maggie MacKeever have been Terps hottest players of late.
“We want to be a team with a multi-prong attack, not one that depends on just one player,” Novak said. “We’ve got a lot of points from our younger players high in the lineup, which is very encouraging.”
Novak is confident his team shares his personal excitement for the match, especially after an impressive week of practice.
“We had our best practice in terms of energy level and excitement on Tuesday,” Novak said. “We hope to perform at the level that we’ve been training at and get some results.”
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