Loyola’s tennis team has opened up the season and is looking to learn from their early season losses.

The newly organized team is 1-4 this season, its first since the 1990s. It is the 11th Wolfpack sponsored sport. 

Head coach Zubin Engineer said that results will come as the team gains competitive experience. “A lot of the players need to get more matches under their belt,” Engineer said. “It’s all about getting experience and taking it from there.”

Although the team has gained experience, they have struggled in the early going. In their match with McNeese State University, McNeese swept them 9-0 in all of their sets.

In their next match, the Wolfpack tennis team nearly avoided getting swept again with the lone individual point coming when Rachel Crump, psychology sophomore, won in the singles competition against Xavier’s Ashley McGill.

Xavier won last year’s conference championship and will continue to be as tough in conference as they came into the season with a 53 game winning streak against GCAC opponents.

In regards to the early season losses to Xavier, Engineer said, “We held our ground quite well and we competed well with them. It’s a matter of being a lot more consistent and being able to compete at a higher level.”

As the team experienced growing pains at the start of the season Engineer has indicated that he is building the program for the future. “We are building and making sure the foundation is there. Everything needs to be in place before we can even look towards winning matches.”

 In order to make sure the team is ready for game day they practice Monday through Friday. Engineer uses the weekends and game cancellations as off days so that tennis doesn’t overwhelm his players.

In order to fuel a turnaround Engineer said he will be relying heavily on psychology junior Clair Landry, who “came from a D1 school so she has some competitive experience.”

With Landry being the most experienced player and the team’s only upperclassman, Engineer hopes that some of the younger players will feed off her experience and make improvements to their game.

Helping to make the effort of building up the program a possibility is the increased number of players who expressed interest in joining Loyola’s tennis team.

“Tennis will attract a lot of students to Loyola,” Engineer said. “We have a list of prospective freshmen and 491 expressed an interest in tennis on the women’s side.”

The number of prospective students interested in women’s tennis is an increase from the 35 names that were on the list last year.

In spite of being overmatched by opponents at times, Engineer remains optimistic about the future of the program. He pointed to tough losses like the ones to Xavier as good ways for his team to gain experience.As Engineer and his young team look towards the future Engineer said he thinks this year’s unit will start to be a GCAC threat this year.

 “Once they settle down then things will look better,” Engineer said.

Hasani Grayson can be reached at [email protected]