Tennis strong despite youth

“Nervous” is how Southern tennis head coach Jeff Conyers said he feels about his young teams this season, which combined has six freshmen. Conyers said although they have fresh faces, the teams are still blessed with a lot of experience.
“We expect a lot of good things out of this bunch,” Conyers said. “We’ve been blessed for the last couple of year with a lot of experience players on both the men and women side.
“But this year we have some youth led by some senior leadership, but the program is practically a team of freshmen and seniors this year.”
Conyers said the experience would come because he considers they have one of the best schedules in NCAA Division I. The first part of the season will allow the new players to gain more experience before going into conference matches.
The men and women’s tennis teams competed in their first match of the season last weekend. The men played University of Louisiana-Lafayette and the women played against cross-town rival Louisiana State University, both losing 0-7.
“We just got to get a little bit more experience under the new player’s belt,” Conyers said. “They were a little nervous coming out in their first collegiate match.”
Senior Jennifer Floyd said a big issue is trying to convince the younger players to be relaxed and have fun, than focusing on the competition.
“We tell them to do a good job and not to worry so much,” Floyd said. “We are doing okay as a team and we are going to get better. We are going to repeat as SWAC champions.”
The women’s tennis team (14-8 overall, 4-0 Southwestern Athletic Conference) won their eighth SWAC championship and fourth straight last year and the men (8-11 overall, 1-2 SWAC) didn’t make the championship round.
“We have this time to tune up their game, hopefully we can pull some upsets the first part of the season and shock the nation,” Conyers said.