Barsby can’t complain about fall season

With a successful fall pre-season under his belt, Tennis Coach Steve Barsby has nothing to complain about.
Barsby, who’s spending his fourth year at Georgia College & State University, knows that having a successful team is about setting realistic goals. Though tournaments are won match by match, his goal is raising the team’s conference standing.
“We’ve finished between seventh and ninth every year in the conference. I want to try to get up to fourth or fifth.”
However, these things don’t happen without a plan. For Barsby, that means doing what it takes to create a well-rounded team.
“Everyone’s one and two players are usually good, but once you get to three, four, five and six, teams’ depths start to separate. If we can play solid in those spots we’ll beat a lot of teams.”
Barsby said depth was the key to last year’s successful women’s team, which landed at number one in the Mid-Atlantic region. The top player from that team has returned and after a strong pre-season she’s hoping to maintain her position.
At 5’3″, Luiza Biktyakova is the smallest player on the court, but don’t let that fool you. After the spring 2003 season, she was ranked third in the Mid-Atlantic region and 15th in the country, not to mention being an All-American.
After an upset loss in the round of 16 at the 2003 ITA Mid-Atlantic Regional Tournament, Biktyakova’s confidence dropped. Building on lessons learned at that tournament and playing with the home court advantage, Biktyakova attacked the Alltel Women’s Fall Tennis Championships knowing she could do better.
“After the region tournament I told myself I had to do better and that I could do better and I did. I tried my best and it turned out well, which I didn’t expect,” said Biktyakova. “It’s nice to win a tournament in your hometown. I knew that there were people here who were cheering for me to win and it was nice to get my confidence back.”
Coach Barsby says it’s victories like this that keep players like Luiza Biktyakova going.
“The victory wasn’t expected, but she played very well. She beat a girl who was ranked higher than her, so it was a great rebound after the regional tournament. Once she regained her confidence she did very well,” said Barsby.
According to Coach Barsby, a thread of confidence runs through all successful tennis players and after his first year here, Brandon Lee gained the confidence and experience he needed to become the only undefeated player at GC&SU.
“I thought I played especially well this season considering last year I played in the same division, but I lost in the first round,” said Lee. “I had more experience coming into this year and I think that’s the main reason why I played so well.”
With an 8-0 record, it’s hard to imagine Lee having any low points. He said they happened, but he did his best to overcome them.
“It was the last match at regionals and I was up 6-5, match point. Then I choked and it became a tie breaker. I thought I was going to lose the entire tournament because I lost that match point. I just battled back and won,” Lee said.
Barsby said that even though Lee doesn’t play at the highest division, every match matters.
“Brandon played in two flights that weren’t the top flights, but every match counts the same. Where he fell into place he was very good. For him to start off this year like that, with that confidence, it will hopefully push him to knock someone down that played higher last year and hopefully that makes our team a lot deeper.”
That depth is something Barsby hopes to bring to this year’s men’s team.
“The level of our guy’s team has been lower than our girl’s team, but hopefully this year it’ll get closer. The guys who’ve been around for four years are probably hurt a little bit because they haven’t been so successful.”
Barsby says that because the girls have been so successful they usually receive more attention, but maybe, that will be changing.
“I think the guys this fall played with a little bit of an attitude and hopefully in the spring it will kick off. We have a tough schedule, but in our conference there’s a tough schedule every year.”
Right off the bat GC&SU faces Augusta State and Aiken — fierce rivalries that could threaten their confidence, but Barsby is already preparing his team for the spring. They’ll play matches three days a week, work in the gym two days a week and run every day, but Barsby won’t allow the difficult training regimen to bring down academic performance.
“Life isn’t just about tennis; it’s about the whole experience. Yes, you want to win all the time, but you want to be successful off the court as well,” said Barsby, who doesn’t sugarcoat why these athletes are here. “We’re using these athletes to play tennis and they need to use us to get a degree.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 14 2003. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry