The tennis season begins today, and both Harding\u2019s men and women\u2019s teams are looking forward to what they hope will be a successful season.<\/p>\n
The Harding women\u2019s tennis team enters the spring season ranked No. 2 in the Great American Conference (GAC), one point behind Oklahoma Baptist University, according to the preseason GAC Coaches Poll. The men\u2019s team was also picked to finish second, according to the same poll.<\/p>\n
David Redding has coached both of Harding\u2019s tennis teams for the past three years. He would not have been surprised if the women had been selected as the conference favorite. The Lady Bisons\u2019 success this fall, combined with their depth make them difficult to beat, according to Redding.<\/p>\n
“I feel that our top six will be one the strongest teams that Harding has ever fielded from top to bottom,\u201d Redding said. \u201cWe have a very good chance \u2014 a very good opportunity \u2014 to qualify for postseason play this year. [It is] the best opportunity we\u2019ve had in a number of years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rylie Cox, a junior transfer student on the women\u2019s team, is Harding\u2019s No. 1 singles player this season, according to Redding. Cox said some players to look out for on the women\u2019s team will be senior Arisa Takanashi, who was the No. 1 singles player for Harding last year and sophomore Hana Folse, who will be the No. 3 singles player for Harding this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe trained a lot in the fall, and it looks like everyone\u2019s playing pretty well right now,\u201d Cox said. \u201cHopefully, we do well.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the men\u2019s side, sophomore Morgan Salvan, who was regional and conference Freshman of the Year in 2018, said he hopes the team will win their conference this year and believes the depth they have added will make a difference. Harding added four additional players to their roster this season.<\/p>\n
Redding said the men\u2019s conference will be very competitive this season
\nbecause every GAC team is very talented, but he is happy with the men\u2019s team\u2019s current level. Redding said the men\u2019s team will be playing eight of the top nine ranked teams in the region, which Harding has never done before.<\/p>\n
Redding said some of the men\u2019s team players to look out wwfor will be juniors Alejandro Sendra and Luis Tirado, who were both all conference last year, and freshman Arthur Bellan from France. Redding also said that A.J. Barrington will be coming back
\nto play this year after having to sit out all of last season due to an injury. Cox, Salvan and Redding all said that they are hopeful to do well this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis first weekend that we play, which is Feb. 1-3, both the men and the women\u2019s team have four matches in three days \u2014 all against very tough opponents,\u201d Redding said. \u201cSo right off the bat, we\u2019ll know what kind of team we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harding opens the season with a match in Dallas, Texas, against Dallas Baptist University today at 10 a.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The tennis season begins today, and both Harding\u2019s men and women\u2019s teams are looking forward to what they hope will be a successful season. The Harding women\u2019s tennis team enters…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15135,"featured_media":12366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12367,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12362\/revisions\/12367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}