Written by Sarah Kyle
With a 16-2 record and current 10-game winning streak, the Lady Bison tennis team is making some noise in the Gulf South Conference this season.
This year’s team is young with several freshmen players making their collegiate debut for the Lady Bisons. Freshman player Ellen Hammons attributes this strength to illustrious high school tennis careers for many of the younger players.
“The freshmen that are really taking big roles for our team this year simply came from our past experiences with competitive tennis,” Hammons said. “The ability to compete well simply comes from competing, and I know many of the other freshmen were highly competitive in their respective states’ USTA groups and high school state tournament.”
Hammons added that her own success comes from a formidable high school program that prepared her for the pressures of performing at a collegiate level.
When choosing a university to continue her tennis career, it was Harding’s faith values that brought Hammons and her tennis skills to the university.
“I initially wanted to come to Harding because of the great opportunity I knew it would give me to allow my personal faith with God to grow,” Hammons said. “I feel even more blessed that I was also given the opportunity to continue playing the sport I love at Harding.”
While Hammons was traditionally a doubles player during her high school competitions, she said that her singles game has definitely improved since coming to Harding. However, Hammons said that playing doubles allows her to relax and have more fun.
“There is something about the team aspect of doubles that I love being a part of,” Hammons said. “Doubles just allows me to relax more and stay focused on one point at a time, and I love getting to share in a win with my partner because the excitement is doubled.”
No matter how strong a player a girl on the team is, Hammons said Coach David Elliot constantly pushes the girls to keep improving different aspects of their game.
“We are a great group with a lot of potential, he [Coach Elliot] says, and he is always trying to help me understand what I can keep working on in my tennis game,” Hammons said. “His expectations for me to not only improve but also perform as well as I can, as much as I can, has greatly helped me to become a better tennis player.”
One of the first areas Hammons said she hopes to improve in is sheer experience.
“My main focus has been on getting in a high state of physical shape specifically for tennis and gaining confidence from all areas of competition in practice and matches,” Hammons said. “The most important area I feel I lack as a freshman is really experience. I have been trying to learn more about how college tennis works and gain the confidence I need so that my team can rely on me to play whatever role I am needed for in the season.”
Fellow freshman player Callie Huey said that she believes the team is doing so well because of a strong sense of community among the girls.
“We had a big recruiting class, but I think we have had such good success because we all get along and play really well together,” Huey said. “We don’t want to let each other down, and so it motivates us to fight really hard to win our matches for our team.”
Huey added that while it is hard to tell how the conference will turn out due to team’s general inexperience with the Gulf South Conference teams, she believes that the team has the talent to perform well in conference games.
“It is hard to say how we will do since most of us have never played teams in this conference, but teams change every year, and how we match up against other teams is always interesting to see,” Huey said. “But I know that we definitely have the ability and talent on our team to play really well against them and have a lot of success in our conference.”
