Seiji Wood
Sports Editor
The Idaho State women’s tennis team has undergone a few offseason changes charging into this spring season. The Bengals will look to continue their success despite an unexpected occurrence.
Last year, ISU finished fifth in the conference with a 9-13 overall record and a 6-5 record in conference. That was good enough for the Bengals to qualify into the Big Sky Conference tournament for the second straight year. However, if Idaho State wants to return for the third consecutive year, it’ll have to do it without one of its key players, Huibre-Mare Botes.
“I woke up on the 23rd of December and had an email that said, ‘I’m not coming back,’” said head coach Gretchen Maloney. “It was a shock and it wasn’t anything that we could respond to.”
During the winter break, the team received unfortunate news that the junior Botes would not be returning for the 2019 season so she can pursue her education in the medical field back in her home country of South Africa. Botes played a major role on the team, playing in both its doubles and singles lineup.
Botes had an 11-9 record last year and mainly played in the number two spot in the singles lineup. She also played alongside her twin sister, Louise-Mare Botes (who still remains with the team), rotating in the number one and two spot for doubles.
The lost of Botes is a blow to the team, but the attitude toward the whole situation has been handled with optimistic outlooks.
“We have changes to our team for the first time in two years,” said Hristina Cvetkovic, a returning junior on the team. “I think we can take that as an advantage because other teams really got to know us … but now we’re different.”
“I think we should take this as a positive,” said Angie Walker, another returning junior. “We’ve really been growing the past two years. Nine of us came in as freshmen and now we have seven of us, and two new girls that we’re gonna look to do some really good things with.”
The current roster consists of seven returning juniors: Louise-Mare Botes, Melissa Coburn, Hristina Cvetkovic, Madi Fenske, Megan Poe, Angie Walker and Andrea Wood. The two incoming freshmen are Adriene Pavek and Alex Arkhipov.
With only nine players on the roster, everyone is important and with most of the team returning, there’s not much that it hasn’t dealt with, but the loss of a key player is adversity the team has never experienced.
“I’m looking at it as kind of an adventure,” Maloney said. “I’m banking on maturity. Most are juniors now, they’re smarter, they’re reducing their errors, and they’re fixing mistakes … we’ve gotta embrace the change and see what we can do with it.”
Cvetkovic and Walker are embracing the change the best way they can.
“I use it as motivation,” Walker said. “We’re missing one of our better players, so we need to step up and we need to do what we can to be better and come together as a team even more than before.”
Cvetkovic agreed, “I don’t think we should feel pressure. We’re good. I don’t think we should have pressure at all.”
Idaho State seeks to take that attitude and use it to propel its team members throughout the season.
Before the start of the 2019 season ISU was ranked sixth in the preseason polls. If that holds true during the season, the Bengals will qualify for their third straight conference tournament berth.
However, even with a decent preseason ranking, the Bengals aren’t looking too far into the future.
“I think we should focus on one match at a time,” Cvetkovic said. “I think we should see how it goes and hope for the best.”
Based on the past two years, it’s gone pretty well for ISU, and a veteran-loaded team should help moving forward.
“I just wanna take our experience into account,” Walker said. “This is our third year. We know what we’re expected to do … and we can use our experience to push us one step forward.”
That experience will really start to count once the Bengals begin conference play on Feb. 16 here at home against Idaho.
