Over the weekend, the Notre Dame Women’s Tennis team competed in two consecutive competitions. On Friday, the team played against Northwestern at home, losing 4-3. On Sunday, it played against Purdue on the road, winning 4-3.
After roughly a month of the spring season, the Irish women (6-3) are still looking to string together a series of consecutive wins. The competitions against Northwestern (2-3) and Purdue (3-5) mark the end of matches against regional opponents. These matches were highly beneficial to the team as it prepares to shift over to ACC play.
If there is one word that Head Coach Alison Silverio would use to describe her team’s performance this weekend, she would say that the squad battled.
Silverio commented on how the team fought for every single point this weekend.
“Overall we battled very hard and competed well,” she said. “That’s something that we want to continue to do throughout this entire season. We talk a lot about our championship mindset and what that means. Being able to compete at the highest standard every time that we take the court is imperative for us. We understand that our tennis may fluctuate from match to match, but we want to make sure those areas that we have control over, how hard we compete and our championship mindset, stay in the right place.”
Since returning from winter break, the Irish have competed in nine competitions over a period of three weeks. With such a high volume of matches, the women on this Irish team are logging away valuable hours and reps on the court in real game scenarios.
“I think that it has had a great effect on us,” Silverio said. “We are in the ACC conference, which is the toughest conference in the country. Being able to play as competitive matches as we have had already this season, in this first month, against some very talented teams is only going to propel us forward as we go into all the ACC matches coming up.”
Silverio’s takes on the ACC should not be taken lightly. As a former player for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, Silverio led her team to an NCAA championship, won the NCAA championship, earned NCAA tournament MVP honors and took home three ACC championships. If anybody can judge the rigors of the ACC and what it takes to prepare for it, it is Silverio.
“We certainly have been battle tested in this first month,” Silverio said. “We haven’t been successful in all of those matches from a results standpoint, but we certainly have had many little victories. I think that those are going to continue to propel us throughout the season. The team is going to have that confidence coming into these tougher matches that we are going to continue to face throughout the season.”
With that, a few Irish women stood out this weekend against Northwestern and Purdue. One of these athletes was sophomore Maeve Koscielski. According to Silverio, the young Irish star had opportunities to shine on both days of competition.
“Yesterday, against Purdue, it came down to the final match, which was on court six for us. Maeve Koscielski, who was at six against Purdue, was also at six against Northwestern,” Silverio said. “At Northwestern, she certainly had opportunities to close out the match and wasn’t quite able to capitalize on it. Again, she was put in that situation less than 48 hours later against Purdue and this time was able to capitalize. I think that it was great for her, not only individually, but also for our team. To see that confidence and that feistiness in the match was just a great example of her actions and her work ethic.”
Additionally, Silverio made special mention of junior Cameron Corse, who also put on a good performance on both Friday and Sunday.
“Overall, the weekend was just a great team effort, from everyone,” Silverio said. “To get to that fourth point you really have to have three other points that were won. Cameron Corse came out of the gates very fast against Purdue ... Being able to see some of the failures that we had on Friday and then being put in similar situations again on Sunday with a few of our players; it was great to see us capitalize and make that improvement from Friday’s match to Sunday’s match.”
Next weekend the Irish women will travel to Lake Nona, Florida to compete against the University of Southern California. All eight members of the team will be making the trip down to Florida.
