DENVER – MSU Denver tennis programs in transition will dive into traditional type of season this weekend, with the Roadrunners' women's team scheduled to play four dual matches and the men lined up for two.
The women play host to Nebraska-Kearney at 2 p.m. Thursday, then spend the weekend in Pueblo, Colo., to play neutral-court matchups against Dallas Baptist (Friday, 8:30 a.m.), Texas-Permian Basin (Friday, 12:30 p.m.) and Fort Hays State (Kan.) on Saturday at 8 a.m.
The men play the same opponents as the women at the same time on Friday.
"It's a lot of tennis," MSU Denver coach
Josh Graetz said. "But we'll take it considering what has happened in the past year with COVID."
Graduation and attrition claimed a number of the Roadrunners' top players from last season, and only a few players have had experience playing in the top spots in the lineup.
Team captains
Gala Castello and
Billy McDermott are stepping into the leadership void.
"Gala has done as good of a job as she can from the sidelines," Graetz said. "Our guys' team chemistry is really good. They seem like a group that has been around each other for a few years, and they've only been together for three weeks. Billy has done a great job of keeping those guys accountable and setting the standard."
The Roadrunners opened the season last weekend with their own MSU Denver Invitational. Among the top performers were
Jeanloup Auzias for the men and true freshmen
Monica Guarin and
Riley Peterson for the women.
"Jeanloup beat a couple of good players and had a solid weekend," Graetz said. "For the women, Monica and Riley both won a couple of rounds in the C Draw, and Riley made it to the final. They're both still learning and getting better."
While the spring portion of the season is filled with dual matches, this weekend represents the only duals scheduled for the fall. Dual-play team results are what determines teams' postseason destinies.
"We lost a lot of tough matches last weekend, so hopefully that is a good learning lesson so that when we are put in tough situations again, we'll know how to handle it a little bit better," Graetz said. "I think some of our newcomers were pretty nervous, and that was the whole intention of last weekend, to get ready for these matches and to put us in a position to be successful."
Duals are different. It's more winning for the team rather than winning for yourself. That will begin to reveal itself as the women play Nebraska-Kearney.
"It's a new environment for our three newcomers," Graetz said. "It's different than the invitational. They'll have to have high energy. There's more on the line in a dual match. I'm excited to see them compete and compete for each other."
