Ward Sutlive, Campus Carrier sports editor
“Failure is the best teacher.” Douglas Elly, the coach of the Berry College men’s tennis team, takes that saying to heart. On Friday, during a 2 p.m. game at the Rome Tennis Center, the men’s team lost to Wallace State Community College 0-7. Despite that setback, Elly believes that his team can learn from the loss and come back stronger than ever.
“You want the challenging matches to prepare you to continue to play better tennis,” Elly said. “Unchallenging matches don’t develop a player.”
Multiple players on the men’s team share Elly’s sentiment. One such player is senior Jake Chapman, who believes that challenging matches can be excellent learning experiences. However, the team does have some things that they need to improve on, such as endurance. According to Chapman, they sometimes have difficulty during the final match.
“I feel like we could work on grinding out those last matches,” Chapman said. “And I feel like we could get better at being prepared for moments like that.”
This season has seen two potential opponents for the tennis team join the conference: Southwestern University and Trinity University. Both teams are highly regarded and are consistently ranked among the top 25 D-III men’s tennis teams in the National Collegiate Sports Association. Jace Goode, a senior player on the team, believes that these colleges will be very challenging to beat.
“They’re both very good, so it’s going to be hard for us to climb the conference ladder with those two new teams,” Goode said.
The team has a couple of different methods of practice and preparation. According to Chapman, the structure of a practice changes depending on the day. Some days the team will work on improving their serve, while other days their training focuses on strengthening their endurance. Despite the flexible nature of the practices, there is some consistency within them. A staple of most practices is the single and doubles, where players will go up against each other. The players also begin all their practices with a light jog, then several stretching exercises. Chapman appreciates the variety of practices the team does.
“Practice is just trying to cram in as much as possible, [and] getting ready for every match that we play,” Chapman said.
Elly takes a lot of pride in his team. With four new freshmen joining the roster, he is optimistic about the rest of the season, even with the early setbacks. However, Elly wants his team to do more rigorous training during the off seasons than they have done in the past. The main reason for this change is that other college teams do a great deal of off-season practice and come back stronger as a result.
In spite of this critique, Elly is also fully aware of the many strengths his team possesses. Recently, he noticed the team’s chemistry on the court has greatly improved and is beginning to match the camaraderie that they show off the court.
“The friendships that they have with each other [are] really starting to show how the team is coming together, and it’s fun to see,” Elly said.
This season, several players have goals that they want to work towards or improvements to their playing styles that they want to make. Chapman wants to improve his return shots and backhand. He typically plays with a two-handed backhand, a method where the tennis racket is held with two hands when hitting the ball. While some players prefer this method, Chapman wants to eventually graduate to using a regular backhand, since that has more power than a two-handed backhand.
“All the best professionals in the world have something to improve on, and there are definitely things that I can get better at,” Chapman said.
Goode’s primary goal for this season is to improve his serve. In the past, he has considered his serve to be one of his greatest weaknesses. Goode has a tendency to accidentally double fault-hitting the ball out of the court twice. In order to prevent this, Goode has been fine-tuning his form and serving technique. He is confident that he can fix this problem and finish this season strong.
“My serve has been affecting the way I play, but I’m trying to improve,” Goode said. “And I’m very much expecting to enjoy my senior year and have fun with it.”
Even though they lost this match, the team believes that they can recover and come back stronger. They are now preparing for their next match, which will be against Shorter University and will take place at Shorter’s Walt Attaway Tennis Complex on Feb. 21, at 1 p.m. The team is eagerly awaiting the chance to make a strong comeback.
“We’re not sure where we are going, but we know that we’re going somewhere, and that our game is improving,” Elly said. “We also know that we as a team have a real shot at getting to the finals doing something special this year.”