While the women’s tennis team’s main season is in the fall, their spring season still gives them a chance to work and improve their skills as a team. The team will compete in seven meets this spring.

Head coach Lindsay Chase said overall she was pleased with how her team fared in the fall.

“Coming out of our fall season we were 4-12,” Chase said. “While this may not appear overly successful from a winning percentage I saw a number of great things going on with the team. We are a very young and inexperienced team.”

Sophomore Lynae Gruber of Shenandoah says the spring season will offer the team more opportunities to improve.

“For our spring season it is more of a postseason,” Gruber said. “We have five or six matches for the spring season. The spring season is a little more relaxed and we focus more on certain skills and strategies that we wouldn’t normally work on during the fall season.”

Junior Jill Berner of Albia is the team’s top player. She has certain expectations she’d like the team to meet this spring.

“I’d like to see us win a couple more meets,” Berner said. “The girls all work so hard and I think that if we keep up our endurance that we can finish a little better.”

Chase mentioned that the team was made up of mostly newcomers in the fall.

“The interesting part of being on a team that needs six players to compete and only having two returners and eight newcomers is that everyone has a chance to make an impact on the team,” Chase said. “During the fall sophomore newcomer Allison Anderson, an Eldridge native, and freshmen Tiffany Bost of Spokane, Wash., Mikayla Struebing of Indianola and Lindsay Nash of Norwalk all stepped up to play in our starting lineup. Each had a different role they played being on the team and each did it well.”

Chase said the team is good at working together, and their chemistry goes beyond the work they do on the tennis court.

“As for the team overall I really just want a group of girls that get along, work hard, are focused and have fun,” Chase said. “I feel this has really been accomplished by the team we have this year. They are really a team. Not only do they get along on the court, many of these girls hang out together outside of tennis.”

Gruber said she recognizes several women who will be the team’s go-to players this spring.

“Jill Berner plays number one and she’s great at it,” Gruber said. “She is really consistent and surprises a lot of teams. I think that anyone on the team has the ability to be the top players. Everyone works hard and is improving everyday.”

When asked about who she thought would be the team’s top players this spring, Berner had a tough time coming up with just one or two.

“I’d like to say my whole team,” Berner said. “I’m always so proud of the effort they put into each match and I’m really glad to call them my teammates. This is also the most fun I’ve ever had in my seven seasons of playing varsity tennis and it’s because of them.”