Wake Forest Athletics
Women's Tennis Ranked 15th in Preseason Poll
1/13/2003 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
Jan. 13, 2003
Wake Forest women's tennis coach Brian Fleishman was named the 2002 ITA National Coach of the Year after taking his squad to the quarterfinals of the NCAA Tournament and guiding Bea Bielik to the NCAA National Singles Championship. Bielik skipped her senior year and turned professional though, leaving Fleishman with only five returning letterwinners to go with one newcomer, none of whom are seniors. What some might call a rebuilding year, Fleishman would call reloading. Two Demon Deacons are ranked in the top 20 of the fall regional singles rankings, plus two doubles tandems, and WFU is ranked 15th in the nation in the preseason team rankings.
"The 2003 season really is going to be an exciting one," said Fleishman, who begins his sixth season at Wake Forest and fifth at the helm. "With the loss of (Janet) Bergman, Bielik and (Maren) Haus, coupled with the youth of the team, there is some uncertainty about the outcome of the season.
"My expectations are that we maintain what we have been in the past," Fleishman continued. "Barring injuries we should be fine. The girls on the team are ready and willing to rise to the occasion of filling the void that we lost last year. If we have to base it on how the fall season went, I think we are going to be right where we should be."
Playing in three tournaments this past fall, the Demon Deacons had a chance to get some individual matches and more importantly sort out their lineup. Katie Martzolf was ranked 99th in the preseason rankings, but she lost in the finals of the Deacon Classic to teammate Karin Coetzee. Coetzee is ranked 14th in the fall regional rankings, Martzolf is 17th, the doubles team of Coetzee and Aimee Smith is 13th and Martzolf and Danielle Schwartz are 15th.
"Karin is one of the more talented players that I have been associated with," Fleishman said, "and now she is not intimidated to fill that top spot. She and Martzolf are the two best players on the team and both are working extremely hard to get even better. Those two players are going to be a huge part of the success of this team and they know that and I expect them to step up and accept the challenge.
"We had a very successful fall season," continued Fleishman. "It had some high and low points like any season, but the fall season shows that we are going to be a good team. This team will grow as the time goes on. This year will be a great year to get a lot more experience under our belts." The Demon Deacons went 6-2 in league play to finish third in the ACC last year. Conference rivals Duke and North Carolina will be tough to beat this season.
"A realistic goal for us would be to finish in the top three of the ACC," Fleishman said. "A goal that would be higher to obtain would be to win an ACC championship, but again that is what we gear our whole season around and that is what we are going to be striving for this year. Anything can happen."
Wake Forest will take on quite possibly its most difficult schedule in the program's history with the amount of high caliber teams appearing on this year's slate. Fourteen of their 21 opponents qualified for the NCAA Tournament last season.
"To get players to come here, to try to build a tradition, you have to play the best schedule you possibly can play and each year you have to keep adding to that," said Fleishman. "You do not want to kill the kids, but they do not come here just to have an easy walk in the park. They want to be pushed and they want to play the best competition they can, and this is what makes us a better team."
Only two matches into the season, Wake Forest will travel to Madison, Wisc., to compete in the National Indoor Team Championships. The Demon Deacons will play three matches with any of the following powerhouses: Stanford, Florida, Georgia, UCLA, North Carolina, Duke, William & Mary, Northwestern, Tulsa, Texas A&M, Wisconsin, Southern Cal, Tennessee, California and Kentucky.
"National Team Indoors is an Invitational Tournament that is supposed to get the top 16 teams or the best 16 teams possible in one location and let them go at it," Fleishman said. "It can be a sort of predictor of how the season is going finish up. The top 12 teams from last year are supposed to get invitations, plus regional representation and the host school, which is Wisconsin. That will give us three quality matches to add to our schedule. It will also give us three quality matches to judge where we stand and what we need to work on. It is a great start to the season. I am expecting us to do well against Yale and Indiana, the first two schools on our schedule. Hopefully those will build some confidence, and show us what we need to work on."
Wake Forest has made nine consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament, including three quarterfinal appearances in the last five years.
"Making the tournament is definitely an obtainable goal," Fleishman said. "Getting to the final 16 site is going to be a challenge and it is just going to depend on how well our season goes and how healthy we are at the end of the season if we make it to the final 16 or not." While Fleishman's coaching staff is technically new, first year assistant coach Janet Bergman and first year volunteer coach Tamer Hegazy are no strangers to the Demon Deacon women's tennis program. Bergman was a four-year letterwinner at Wake Forest, breaking the school record for career singles and career doubles wins and picking up All-American honors three times in doubles and once in singles.
"Janet Bergman brings a lot to the table as my assistant with her experience, being an All-American and playing for Wake Forest," Fleishman said. "She not only has a tremendous amount of experience on the court, but she has a tremendous amount of pride for the university. Janet was one that never liked to lose. She will bring that competitiveness to the team in practice and hopefully that will spread during our competition season. Anytime you have a former player, a former All-American player, coming back to be an assistant and helping the rest of the team, that is something they will look up to. All the girls on the team want to be an All-American and Janet knows how to do that, so hopefully she will be a great role model for the players and take them to the next level."
Hegazy, who is in his second year as the Manager of the Wake Forest Indoor Tennis Center, added volunteer women's tennis coach to his list of duties earlier this fall. A former pro-tour player with 10 years of professional coaching experience, Hegazy compliments Fleishman and Bergman perfectly.
"Tamer really had a huge impact in the fall," Fleishman said. "He took a lot of the work load off myself. His experience, his background as a former college player, touring coach at the pro level, brings a lot to the table and the girls really appreciated his help and his knowledge of the game. He made all of the players better in the fall." With the steady play of Wake Forest's top two doubles teams this past fall, it looks like the Demon Deacons could have an advantage in the spring when it comes to the doubles point. Coetzee and Smith make up the top duo. They went 5-5 in the fall, 11-5 last year and are ranked 13th in the preseason region rankings. Martzolf and Schwartz went 18-9 last year, 7-1 this fall and are ranked 15th in the preseason region rankings. That leaves Elizabeth Proctor and newcomer Sandie Knight for the No. 3 tandem.
"Martzolf and Schwartz and Coetzee and Smith got a lot of matches under their belts in the fall," Fleishman said. "Their experience, knowing each other and knowing what to expect out of the other person makes them our two impact teams.
"We will try out Sandie and Liz early and see how that works out," Fleishman continued. "If we have to change it up we'll make a change, but right now our one and two teams are pretty much set. I am looking for Smith and Coetzee to be our top team this year and they definitely showed that they can win at a high level. They beat a top 30, top 25 team right off the bat in the second match of the season at William and Mary and that confidence will make them a very dangerous team. Then with Martzolf and Schwartz at number two, both players are very competitive and they understand doubles. They are not going to lose very many matches at number two."
At the conclusion of the fall season Wake Forest had a clear cut number one singles player in Karin Coetzee. Winning her first 11 matches of the fall before falling to No. 8 Kate Pinchbeck in the quarterfinals of the ITA Southeast Regional, Coetzee captured singles titles at the William & Mary Invitational as well as the Deacon Classic.
"Karin will definitely start the season at number one," Fleishman said. "She had an 11-1 record with her only loss going to a top 10 player in the country. She beat Katie (Martzolf) along the way, so I see her stepping up to that number one role and she definitely has the talent to beat any player in the country on any given day. The key to her success is just being able to keep her composure and have that confidence that she can compete at that top level."
Giving Wake Forest the second hit in its deadly 1-2 punch, is Katie Martzolf at No. 2 singles. The sophomore was nationally ranked at the beginning of the year and went 8-3 in the fall. She worked her way into the national rankings last year as a freshman and was picked 17th in the fall regional rankings this past December.
"With Katie at number two, she is right there breathing down Karin's neck," Fleishman said. "Those two players are very interchangeable throughout the season. Sometimes we might have to do it matching up different styles with different players, but Katie showed us her freshman year she can play at a high level and established herself in the rankings very early on in her career and I see her building on that this year."
Rounding out the rest of the lineup are juniors Aimee Smith, Elizabeth Proctor, sophomore Danielle Schwartz and freshman Sandie Knight. Proctor was a singles finalist at both the William & Mary Invitational and the Deacon Classic, Schwartz won the consolation bracket at the Deacon Classic and Smith won six fall matches. Knight arrived at Wake Forest in January, enrolling for the second semester, so she will be making her collegiate debut against Yale in the season opener.
"The other four players are going to be competing everyday at practice and in match play to see who establishes the rest of the team," Fleishman said. "Right now everybody is pretty even. All those players could probably beat each other on any given day, but it is going to be a matter of who wants it more, who is going to put more time into it and who is going to show me that they can win at a higher level on a regular basis. Basically those four players control their own destiny. I think all of them want to win and all of them want to play at a high spot on the team. But it is going to be who is more motivated and who wants it more.
So what happens when you take away the top three players from a 24-6 team that made it to the NCAA Quarterfinals? There is only one thing you can do. You call upon your young guns to step up and do what they came to Wake Forest to do ... win tennis matches.
"I think anytime after you lose the three players that we lost, which was the top of the lineup, you have to look at it in some aspects of a rebuilding year," Fleishman said. "But then again you do not know if the players below them are going to rise to the occasion or not. My expectations are that they will. The players that are still on the team understand that they have to rise to the occasion and I know they are willing and capable of doing that."
