Teams cannot afford to lose a point in a conference as competitive as women’s tennis in the Southeastern Conference.
The No. 16 LSU team learned that the hard way.
It’s most recent 3-4 loss against then-No. 8 South Carolina on April 2 marked the Lady Tigers’ seventh match of the season that was decided by just one point.
With no clear one-sided matches on the schedule, coming out strong in doubles play has been as crucial as ever. Though the Lady Tigers were off to a promising start, it took major lineup changes in order to compete with fellow top-10 contenders.
“It’s been an interesting year,” said LSU co-head coach Julia Sell. “We started off doing great in doubles, but especially with women players, it’s so much more about chemistry than what makes sense on paper. We had three teams who had a lot of proven results in the years past with incredible chemistry. At a certain point they just clicked off.”
LSU started the season with five consecutive wins in doubles play but followed the streak by losing four in a row.
While strong performances in singles play made up for their struggles, the team knew something had to be done, as they started conference play without victories on any doubles courts in the first two matches.
Sell said the coaching staff disregarded chemistry aspects and focused on who would fit the best on paper. The result, she said, has brought out the best in everyone and continues to improve their confidence, which had been a challenge earlier in the season.
“Their friendships were so strong outside of the court that we stuck with it probably a little longer than we should have,” Sell said. “At a certain point we said, ‘Well it’s not working anymore. We can always come back to it, but right now, let’s just drop a bomb on it, blow it up and try something totally different and see if that sparks the chemistry we had before.’ And I think that it did.”
As the season progressed and the new pairs became familiar with each other’s playing style, the Lady Tigers’ doubles performances quickly started to reflect their national ranking.
Progress reached a high point in the 2-5 loss against then-No. 7 Vanderbilt on March 19. The matchup marked LSU’s first doubles victory of conference play, as the Lady Tigers’ took courts 2 and 3, but the lineup was far from it’s final stage.
“We’ve never really been a strong doubles team,” said junior Abigail Owens. “We had to build that up and get more comfortable in trusting each other and ourselves, while not being nervous and enjoying the process.”
And the process keeps climbing up.
After losing to Vanderbilt, the Lady Tigers swept their following home weekend against then-No. 26 Arkansas and then-No. 59 Missouri, while not allowing a single win in doubles play.
“We are way more aggressive,” Owens said. “I definitely have been volleying more, and we don’t play two-back like me and [senior] Skylar [Kuykendall] did. I’ve been getting a lot of looks up at net, and it has helped me getting more comfortable with my volleys, too.”
Now, Sell focuses on minor adjustments.
With this week’s focus on returning, a great sense of encouragement and optimism dominates practice, because the issues are easily fixable.
“We’re actually working away as the better doubles team, where as before, we weren’t even in some of these matches,” Sell said. “It was poor, poor performances some of those days. With doubles, you can’t be afraid to change it and that’s what I think has been good for us so far.”