SIU Women's Tennis Begins Fall Season
09/24/2003 | 12:00:00 | Women's Tennis
Sept. 24, 2003
By Dustin Thompson
www.SIUSalukis.com
CARBONDALE, Ill - SIU looks to pass their first test of the fall season this weekend at the Evansville Invitational Tournament.
Evansville, Ind. will play host to an eight team invitational tournament September 26-27. Western Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky, Morehead State, Austin Peay, Southern Indiana, Southeast Missouri State and host Evansville, along with the Salukis, will battle it out in this year's tournament.
The Salukis return eight players from last years team with hopes of using their experience to lead them to victory. With no freshmen listed on the roster, SIU looks to capitalize on having experienced players to lead the team to a good showing at this tournament. The Salukis look to a trio of seniors made up of Alejandra Blanco, Tana Trapani and Jessica Knitter for leadership.
With a roster of experienced players, the Salukis are anxious and ready to get the season underway. "We are ready to get going and ready for competition," said head coach Judy Auld. "You can only practice for so long, we are ready to see what we need to work on and what some of our weaknesses are."
Coach Auld has expectations that her team will compete and do very well in this weekend's tournament.
"This is a good tournament for us, we have a really good chance of doing real well. We are looking for people to have the chance to get into the semi- finals and finals," said Auld.
Auld is looking for a good start to her 30th year at SIU and said she would like to see things start off really good for her team. "I'm looking for us to start out a lot better than we did last year. I hope we can pick up right where we left off last spring and hopefully our experience will show right away at this weekend's tournament."
The Evansville Invitational pairings will be posted Thursday and can be seen at gopurpleaces.com.