After a strong fall season and long winter break, the Vandal women’s tennis team will drive to Lewiston Monday to compete against Lewis-Clark State College.
Idaho coach Daniel Pollock said he realizes the Warriors will be a solid challenge to open the spring season.
“LCSC is definitely not a team we can overlook,” Pollock said. “They are led by the 10th ranked NAIA singles player in the nation, Dominika Jasova, and the 11th ranked doubles team in the nation, Jasova and Dorothy Chong.”
Pollock said the Warriors play very disciplined tennis and are coached well, which should make them a good measuring tool for the Vandals as they begin the new season.
LCSC women’s tennis coach Kai Fong expects a difficult match from the Vandals, considering they lost to the Vandals twice last season. First the Vandals beat the nearby rivals 7-0, and then 5-2 to end last year’s regular season.
“We have dropped many against the Vandals,” Fong said. “The Vandals have better skilled players throughout their lineup. This is to be expected of fully funded scholarship programs.”
This will be the furthest the Vandals travel until Feb. 3, when they take on the Gonzaga Bulldogs.
All that time close to home has the Vandals looking to start the season strong. Pollock said he is comfortable with the conditioning of his team coming into spring competition. He said fall practice was excellent and they are prepared for the spring matches.
“All the girls are significantly stronger physically now than they were during the fall season,” Pollock said. “We worked extremely hard on strength and speed during the offseason, which will hopefully allow the players to both perform at a higher level and stay injury free.”
One significant challenge the Vandals face this year is the youth of the team. Of the seven members of the squad, four are sophomores and just two seniors lead the way.
Pollock said only one of the probable starting six has more than one year of college tennis experience and three have never played in a dual match before.
“With such a young team it’s tough to set longterm wins and losses goals until after the first few dual matches have been played, and even then it is difficult,” Pollock said.
Pollock said the loaded schedule includes matches against BYU, Oregon and Kansas, and has his goal set around the .500 mark.