The fall season is fully underway for both halves of Illinois tennis. The women’s team has participated in three competitions since their season started on Sept. 20, while the men’s team has officially participated in four events. The men’s team also sent players to the Fayetteville M15 Futures and Ann Arbor M15 Futures, which were run by the International Tennis Federation and do not count as collegiate play.
Both squads now face the ITA Midwest Regional championship, an annual tournament that offers the chance to qualify for NCAA championships in November.
“This is one of the highlights of the fall,” said men’s head coach Brad Dancer. “Regional championships is now one of the three pathways into the NCAA championships. This is the one tournament where all of our guys get a shot. You can feel a little bit of the tension in practice this week, if that makes sense. Guys are edgy and uptight, which is kind of what you want to have. I think it means the guys care a lot.”
Two different Big Ten schools are serving as hosts for the tournament. On the men’s side, Michigan State is welcoming the rest of the midwest regional to East Lansing, and Ohio State is responsible for running the women’s tournament in Columbus. The host site alternates each year, with Illinois most recently hosting in 2022 for the men’s tournament.
Although the site changes every year, junior McKenna Schaefbauer said there is still a lot of valuable experience from having already participated in regional tournaments. Schaefbauer played in the Midwest Regional last season, as well as the Carolina Regional during her freshman year at South Carolina.
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“They’re really long days, and it can be really tiring,” Schaefbauer said. “Knowing that going in, knowing how it can go, where you just have to be ready to go, no matter what the circumstances with scheduling is, really helps me now that I’ve done it before.”
Both regionals feature tough competition, filled with familiar Big Ten opponents along with other midwestern schools like Notre Dame. Evan Clark, head coach of the women’s team, said his squad is aware of the difficult field but is excited to take on the challenge.
“It’s just a really tough regional,” Clark said. “We’ve got one of the tougher regionals in the country and it’s a lot of familiar people. This is one of the pathways to qualify for the NCAA championships so I think everybody’s going to be wanting to play their best tennis to try to qualify for that. There’s nerves, here and there, but more excitement of competing in probably one of the biggest events in the fall.”
It can be easy to get wrapped up in the excitement of the regional championships. Redshirt junior William Mroz said that lowering expectations and focusing on the work he puts in is what will bring him success.
“For me, one thing I’ve figured out is to go into all these events with no expectations,” said Mroz. “All-Americans was a pretty high stakes event and I was very close to making the main draw there. Over the summer, getting my first professional points, I was just going in with no expectations. Just going in with a clear mind and knowing that all the work I’m putting in is going to show. It might not show this weekend. It might show in a month. You never know when it’s gonna show, but I firmly believe that it will show.”
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