Women’s tennis opens with shutout win

Georgia College women’s tennis team kicked off its Spring season with a great start with a shutout victory over Clark Atlanta University.

Senior Bertille Lion, called “B Lou” by her fans and teammates, demonstrated the determination her and her teammates have in store for the season. Lion, a marketing major at Georgia College, has been with the women’s tennis team on scholarship for four years as an international student from France.

“I think it was okay for the first match, but it was kind of stressful, you don’t know what to expect,” Lion said.

Lion fought till the end against Muncishe Makuni from Clark Atlanta to win 6-3, 6-3. After going into deuce multiple times, Lion kept the tennis team’s undefeated score.

Head Coach Steve Barsby says her match struggle was “more of a lack of focus trying to stay in the match…she plays a couple of loose points here and there which keeps that other girl in the match, but once she got it rolling she was totally in control in the match it was just a matter of maintaining that focus to get through it.”

“I thought we played okay, a little rusty but hopefully we will work that out before (USC) Aiken next Friday,” Barsby said. “We played good…if we look at the score, it looks like we played real well, but it was decent.”

Lion says there are bigger opponents in store for this season, mainly Armstrong Atlantic University.

“Armstrong, Columbus State, and Francis Marion would be the three biggest teams on our schedules in the conference,” Barsby said. “We’ve really been trying to work on consistency, really being fighters on the court and today being a little rusty, you could see they were getting a little frustrated.”

Due to the weather, the team has missed out on five or six days of practice.

Barbsy said the team is currently a stronger singles team and needs to focus on working on doubles due to changing doubles partners.

“It’ll take some time to get adjusted to that,” he said.

After losing three girls from last year, the team welcomed on five new teammates in the fall and are bringing all eight players back to this spring’s team.

“I think we’re better than last year…hopefully it will continue,” Barsby said.

The women’s tennis team will play Feb. 11 at USC Aiken at 2 p.m., and their next home game is on Feb. 25 at 2 p.m.

Posted by Steffi Beigh on Feb 3 2011. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.