Will Hoogendyk, Campus Carrier sports editor
The Berry College men’s and women’s tennis programs have been playing since 1959 and boast one of the nicest facilities in the entire school. The Rome Tennis Center offers the teams year-round training facilities with over 50 outdoor courts and six indoor courts. In the fall, the team practiced three times a week with additional workouts, but with competition season starting up, the team practices five days a week from 3:30 – 6 p.m. Head Coach Doug Elly talked about the differences between fall and spring training regimens.
“We spend a lot of time in the fall on developing our game and then we concentrate in the spring more on how to win with what we have,” Elly said.
Even though both teams started playing in the fall, over two-thirds of their matches are held in the spring. This includes a lineup of matches versus conference opponents and other teams in the South. Paige Evans, a freshman on the women’s team, is most looking forward to spring break, when the team will play a weeklong tournament in South Carolina.
“We’re going to Hilton Head, and I think it’ll be really fun,” Evans said. “I love playing in tournaments and we’ll all be together.”
For each Division III tennis season, teams are only allowed 114 days of practice time. These 114 days must come within the academic year, meaning practices over summer and winter break are prohibited. Elly, came to Berry at the beginning of last season from William Jewel, a Division II school. DI and DII schools do not have these same practice limitations as Division III does, which has changed the way Elly and Assistant Coach Edward Rodionov recruit future Vikings.
“Edward and I focus a lot on recruiting players that are self-motivated,” Elly said. “They will do their training in the summertime and over break on their own. They will play tournaments on their own [and] they won’t take that time to not do tennis.”
Even with Berry’s differences as a Division III school, the cultural difference around how athletics are viewed at an institution is one of Elly’s favorite parts about coaching.
“In Division I everybody wants to win but Division III is a little bit more focused on the spirit of the competition and developing your game,” Elly said. “Division I is very focused on recruiting players that are already fully developed so that they can win. We’re more focused on [them] being good students and developing them [during] the four years while they’re here with their passion for the sport.”
Elly, who has almost 30 years of experience as a tennis professional, brings plenty to the table in terms of being able to grow students not just as players, but as people.
“If I was much younger, I probably would still be doing DI, just because of my interest in a very, very high skill set,” Elly said. “I coached one player on the pro tour, and I liked that when I was younger, but I prefer this. I really enjoy working with players that have a passion for the sport.”
This desire to help coach the younger generation is one that his players recognize and appreciate. For Evans, it stuck out when she was deciding where to play collegiate tennis.
“I really liked Coach Elly,” Evans said. “He seemed very knowledgeable on the sport. I also wanted to come here because of the Rome Tennis Center. The facility is so nice, and we [can] have indoor practices, so it is never canceled.”
Along with coach Elly, one of the reasons that Evans loves playing tennis at Berry is for the strong relationships she has built within the team.
“We’re all so close,” Evans said. “It has been really fun getting to know each other. You always have someone to hit with too.”
It is that same sense of community that Elly and Rodionov want to bring to the rest of the Berry community. Recently, they submitted a proposal to add lights to the tennis courts adjacent to the Richards Gym in hopes of using them for campus-wide tennis events in the coming years.
“We would like to get more of the Berry Community here on campus involved in tennis and we’re working towards that,” Elly said. “That includes a drop-in league [and] a tennis on campus [team]. There is a lot of excitement in the Rome area for tennis it’s just communicating and getting [people] together that seems to be a little bit disconnected.”
With the Rome Tennis Center having already been chosen to host the Division III Tennis National Championships, Elly and Rodionov hope to foster growth, interest and participation in tennis among Rome citizens until then.
In the meantime, their efforts will be focused on the Viking’s own schedule which started with a match against Shorter University this past Saturday where the men fell 2-5 and the women emerged victorious 5-2. Both teams will see action again when Reinhardt University travels to Rome on Friday afternoon. After spring break is when all Southern Athletic Association conference matchups will be contested with Berry hosting Oglethorpe and Millsaps on March 28 and March 30 respectively.