Ferris’ men’s and women’s tennis will have to wait before they can continue winning matches.
The women’s team is off to a strong 7 – 1 start and is ranked no.24 nationally. However, their March 26, March 27 and April 3 matches were postponed due to COVID-19 protocols. On the men’s side, they boast an undefeated 8 – 0 record and had their April 3 match postponed.
Head coach Mark Doren feels the layoff has “put a stall” to both teams’ momentum and could impact their performance going forward.
“It’s going to have an impact,” Doren said. “Anytime you can’t get in the weight room or get on the court to go through normal day-to-day activities it’s going to be different.”
Doren continued to say that his players are “really focused” while in quarantine and doing the things they need to be doing to be as prepared as possible when they return to play.
The women’s team will return to play April 9 against Davenport and April 10 against Purdue Northwest. Then they will face Northwood and Grand Valley April 13 and 14, respectively, to make up the earlier postponements. To close the regular season, they will play three more matches between April 16 – 20, including the make up match against Saginaw Valley April 20.
Playing seven matches in 12 days to close the regular season will be “a difficult task” according to Doren, but one he feels the women are up to.
“It’s going to be a lot,” Doren said. “At this point in the season, even in practice we’re doing a lot of match preparation instead of working on detailed things. Instead of doing practice work, they’re playing a lot of matches, so I think they’re ready for it.”
Sophomore Morgan Waller has her own concerns about playing so many matches in such a short amount of time.
“It’s going to for sure be tough on the body,” Waller said. “Since we’re getting towards the tail end of our quarantine, we’re trying to do a little bit of light workouts to try to get back in shape and put ourselves in a better position for when we can get back out on the court. Once we do start playing, a big thing will be rest and recovery after our matches. Especially with not having played in a while, it’s going to be tough on our body. We have to ice and stretch a lot.”
The men’s team had their matchup with Grand Valley rescheduled for April 14 and will play five matches between April 9 and 17. Their next match is also against Davenport on April 9.
“Postponing a game because of COVID-19 is of course never a fun thing to do,” senior Mathis Guerre said. “As of right now, we are just hoping that everyone will feel better soon. If everyone can get back to practice and healthy in the next few days, I don’t think it will impact the rest of our season.”
Both teams will focus on getting healthy before their upcoming matchups with Davenport on April 9. When they retake the court, both teams will try to move past their two week layoff and continue winning games to finish out the regular season.