After nearly two months of limited practice and no matches, IU women’s tennis will start the new year with the Winter Invitational in Bloomington this weekend. The three-day tournament that starts Saturday and lasts until Monday includes Colorado, Abilene Christian and Marquette.
The team hasn’t competed since November and has also been limited to practice with the coaches the past two months due to an NCAA rule limiting practice time in the offseason.
Despite the drought of scheduled practices, senior Paula Gutierrez took advantage of the free time she had.
“This week we only have like eight hours to prepare for the tournament,” Gutierrez said. “Knowing that, I practiced over Christmas break so I could be ready for the first tournament, and I think the other girls did the same.”
New IU Coach Ramiro Azcui said he enjoys having this four-team tournament as the first one of the season rather than starting things off with dual matches like some schools do.
“One of the things we are mainly looking for this weekend is to put them in a competitive mode again before we hit the dual match season,” Azcui said. “After not competing for a long time it’s hard to instantly get right back into that competitive mode so we are going to use the singles matches this week to try and bring that back out of them.”
Azcui said each player will have the opportunity to play at least six doubles matches. By doing this he said he hopes to finalize the doubles combinations for when dual match season comes around.
At practice this week Azcui said he has had his team focus mainly on the small things to get back in the flow of the match-preparation process.
“We’ve just been doing a few drills, having them focus on a few specific things as well as make them play singles matches against each other since it’s been two months since they’ve played anyone,” Azcui said.
The team consists of six underclassmen and just three upperclassmen, so Gutierrez will be one of several who are looked upon to provide leadership.
“We definitely lack experience,” Gutierrez said. “We do have good chemistry, though, and I think that will help us get some wins.”
With this being her senior year, Gutierrez said she intends to be a leader and have fun.
“I want to improve the consistency of my game,” Gutierrez said. “I always put a lot of pressure on myself so this year I just want to try and have more fun.”
The meet starts at 11 a.m. Saturday. The tournament will be played outside and will only be moved indoors if there is inclement weather. The first round of doubles will be followed by singles matches. The second round of doubles will be played later in the day. The tournament follows the same schedule for the next two days, but the doubles matches will begin at 10:30 those days.
