Ball State University women's tennis team was plagued by a lack of consistency at the Ball State Invitational this weekend.-á
Friday, the Cardinals came out strong and won all three of their doubles matches. The pairs of Haly Calderwood and Christine Stromberg, Jennifer Pollack and Polina Askerko and Emma Retter and Katherine Rist all recorded victories. On Saturday, however, the lack of consistency showed through as the same pairs all dropped their matches.-á
"We really didn't play particularly well this morning [Saturday during doubles play]," coach Kathy Bull said. "We started out really slow. We're going to actually talk about that, trying to figure out what these slow starts are caused by because yesterday we played really sharp all day long and today was a little bit of a different story."-á
In singles action, the field was divided into five flights. The Cardinals best performance came out of Flight "C" where Retter was the runner-up after losing in the championship match to Nao Umemura of Northern Illinois University 6-1, 6-1.
"It feels good," Retter said. "It's nice to have some wins behind me, and it's nice to be able to go out and know what I'm doing and have some competition."-á
Ball State also picked up multiple wins in the tournament from Calderwood, Pollack, Stromberg and Rist. The young team experienced some difficulties but coach Bull said she was encouraged by the progress that they are making.-á
"We're making good strides," Bull said. "I think our younger players are really, really getting thrown in there and getting a great dose of a lot of college matches."-á
With as many as ten matches being played at once and matches being played nonstop, fans always had competition to watch. The tournament had a good atmosphere as most of the schools had fans in attendance to cheer on their team.
Coach Bull had to watch and coach her athletes while managing the tournament at the same time. The Ball State Invitational is the only home tournament for the Cardinals this fall.
The Cardinal Creek Tennis Center hosted the ten team field for the two-day tournament.-á
The field consisted of Ball State and its conference rivals Northern Illinois and Miami University. In-state opponents Butler University and IPFW also made the trip to Muncie. The field was rounded out by the University of Dayton, Wright State University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, University of Tennessee at Martin and Cleveland State University.-á
Though coach Bull was disappointed in Ball State's lack of consistency, she believes the team is learning and gaining valuable experience.-á
"I think we're getting out of the fall exactly what we need," Bull said. "We need a lot of match play because match play shows you some different elements of the game than what practice does. "
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