Carolina aims to extend winning streak at home against Winthrop
South Carolina’s women’s tennis team has had 11 days off from competition since its 5-2 win at Illinois, but the players haven’t used the time to rest.
“We’re not getting rusty,” coach Arlo Elkins said. “We actually used the time to get ready for upcoming outside matches. It’s pretty hard to change from inside to outside. We really used this time to get the extra practice outside. We feel that it benefitted us to have the time off more than it hurt us.”
The Gamecocks will play their second home match of the spring season at 2 p.m. today, hosting No. 56 Winthrop. Although Carolina coasted to a 7-0 victory in last year’s meeting, the Eagles have started strong this season and could pose a greater threat.
“Like always, they have a national ranking,” Elkins said. “They’re really scrappy, and they’ve played some good matches. We beat Furman 6-1, and they beat Furman 6-1. They beat William & Mary, which is a nationally ranked team. They’ve had three or four wins over nationally ranked teams, so we expect a really tough match.”
Winthrop comes to Columbia after consecutive victories over Furman and Tulane this weekend, getting off to a strong start in both by winning the doubles point.
USC’s lineup has been in a state of flux all season as players recover from injuries and coaches try to find effective pairings in doubles. Sophomore Josefin Andersson, who missed the fall season, competed in No. 2 doubles at Illinois, combining with fellow sophomore Madeleine Saari-Byström for an 8-6 win. Andersson didn’t play in singles, however, as the coaches didn’t want to rush her recovery process.
Junior Dijana Stojic and freshman Dominika Kanakova have been playing No. 1 doubles with some consistency for the Gamecocks, but they suffered an 8-5 loss to the No. 15 Fighting Illini. As of now, it’s not certain whether they’ll remain in the top doubles position.
“We’re still kind of looking that over,” Elkins said. “We’ve got some decisions to make. The decisions are based really on who we’re trying to get ready for the rest of the season and get ready for all the upcoming matches. We have to look that over [on Wednesday] and make a decision by the morning.”
Carolina has a match against Clemson to look forward to this weekend, but today the primary objective is defeating Winthrop.
“We’re trying to take one match at a time,” Elkins said. “That’s what I told the girls [on Tuesday]. I can always tell what kind of match they’re going to play and what the talk is in practice. I don’t really want to hear too much talk about Clemson until we get by Winthrop.”