After a successful fall season for the Jackets’ women’s tennis program, the spring season begins this weekend, with the Lady Jackets playing in the Michigan Invitational.
The most notable performance of the fall season was the sophomore doubles team of Megan Kurey and Kendal Woodard winning the USTA/ITA National Indoors Championship. Originally ranked No. 26 at the time of winning their national championship, the team of Kurey and Woodard has since catapulted up to fourth place in the ITA women’s tennis ranking, which in turn makes them the highest ranked doubles team in the South and the ACC.
“We have been playing together technically only a little over for a year. We didn’t start out playing together freshman year. We played a couple matches together at the end of the fall and then played all spring season freshman year and have been playing together since then,” Kurey said.
Kurey grew up watching Kim Clijsters and Roger Federer and even though Kurey now has a national championship under her belt, she is still focused on improving and has her goals set high.
“We are really looking forward to the season starting this weekend. We play Georgia at home this spring so we are especially really excited for that match. Kendal and I had such a great fall winning National Indoors, but we want to continue that success this spring. We know that people will be after us and we can’t wait,” Kurey said.
The ACC is arguably the toughest conference in the country for women’s tennis. It boasts eight schools in the ITA Top 25 rankings, including Tech at No. 20. The team knows this will be the toughest the ACC has ever been with the addition to Notre Dame, Syracuse and Pittsburgh to the ACC.
“The ACC is such a competitive tennis conference. Going into the conference season, you know that you are always going to have tough matches every weekend. We always have to be prepared no matter what team we have that day cause anything can happen,” Kurey said.
The Lady Jackets will have their hands full this weekend with the competition at the Michigan Invitational. Michigan comes into the spring ranked eleventh, but a first place finish this weekend could mean that this young Tech team has made significant strides since finishing 15-10 overall as a team last season.
“We are so excited about the future of this program. We have so much young talent on the team right now and of course our awesome senior captain, but with more great young talent coming in the next year, the future is looking so bright for the GT Women’s Tennis program,” Kurey said.
On the seven person roster for the Jackets, there is only one senior, Switzerland native Muriel Wacker, the lone captain of the team. The rest of the roster is made up of freshman and sophomores. Kurey and Woodard were a part of the No. 1 ranked 2012 recruiting class and last year’s class featuring Rasheeda McAdoo and Alexa Anton-Ohlmeyer was ranked No. 6 in the nation, according to tennisrecruiting.net. McAdoo is the daughter of NBA Hall of Famer Bob McAdoo and led the team with nine single’s wins during the fall.
After this weekend’s invitational, the Jackets go first to Nebraska for the ITA Kick-Off-Weekend then to Charlottesville for the ITA National Team Indoors before starting conference play. During conference play, the Jackets boast a home schedule that features nationally ranked opponents like Georgia, Clemson, North Carolina and Duke.