Lipscomb women’s tennis head coach Jamie Aid will be the first to mention the fact that Lipscomb has unfinished business to deal with this season.
“Two years ago, we should have won [the ASUN Conference championship,” Aid said, “and we’re always building towards that. We’ve been in that position for the last eight years.”
After three straight ASUN Tournament appearances but no conference titles to show for them, Aid is ready to change that narrative with a lineup made up of exuberance and experience alike.
Two years removed from one of the more senior lineups Lipscomb has seen under Aid, including a top-30 ranked player in the nation in Vika Dzyuba, the squad has three underclassmen in the rotation this year. After eight years of watching young women come through her program, though, Aid isn’t concerned about their maturity.
“We don’t really deal with some of the immature things that [other sports’] freshman do; they’re often more worldly than even I am.”
Tennis is frequently one of the more international sports on campus, and this season, the Bisons boast seven internationally-born players on a roster of nine.
“It’s neat to hear their stories, and they’re more similar than you’d think. The tennis world is pretty small; everybody seems to know everybody else.”
For the Lipscomb tennis program, much of the success they find on the court is a secondary byproduct of a larger mentality of long-term development.
“Finding players isn’t necessarily the problem,” Aid said. “Finding players that want to invest in Lipscomb that are going to take the most from the scholarship academically and put it into practice, that’s what we’re looking for.”
When it comes to the on-court expectations, the sky seems to be the limit for a talented and mostly reloaded group from last year.
“It’s really up to these girls,” Aid said. “We’re playing the exact same lineup, pretty much, that we did last year. The same girls that were in our top six last year are in our top six right now, and so I think they put a lot of pressure on themselves to do well.”
That lineup went 10-9 with a 4-2 ASUN record in 2021 and suffered a second-round exit at North Florida in the conference tournament.
“In a sport where you play a game of errors, it’s really up to them with their mentality and how we continue to make them approach these matches. For most of these girls, they only have 19 matches left [in their college careers].”
This season, Aid has opted for a consistently challenging series of matchups that will test the Bisons all season long.
“It’s a strong schedule and a realistic schedule rolling into our conference schedule. There’s not a cupcake match; we had our cupcake matches already.”
The Bisons have opened the season with losses to Tarleton State and Western Kentucky followed by a win over UT Martin. According to Aid, the season doesn’t get any simpler from here.
“The girls should have won both of those games [against Tarleton State and Western Kentucky]. They were more talented than both, but just got so nervous to execute at the end of the day. They want to win, and every team that we play, they’re good. The person that you’re playing against wants to win, too.”
The ASUN Conference is one of the most prestigious mid-major conferences in Division I women’s tennis, and like always, it will provide a worthy challenge to this year’s Lipscomb team.
“It’s a doozy of a tennis conference,” Aid said. “They’re all good tennis schools, every single one of them.”
A pair of opponents in particular will be circled on the Bisons’ calendar, as they’ll have vengeance on their minds.
“We lost 4-3 to Liberty twice last year, and we’ve never beaten North Florida; that is our archnemesis. That’s one mountain that we have not been able to climb.”
As well as Aid knows the quality of the other teams around them, she is quick to point to this moment as the season buds as key to prepare for conference play.
“[It’s about] doing what we’re doing now and treating what we’re doing now the exact same way. No matter who we play, fighting for those points from ball number one and treating these non-conference matchups to get us ready for the conference. All these matches should be fairly similar to what we see in the [ASUN].”
With so much quality on the schedule to prepare them, Lumination Network has the Bisons slated to finish third in the ASUN with a 6-3 conference record and a 12-7 mark overall.
The Bisons were predicted to finish sixth in the coaches’ poll while North Florida, FGCU, and Liberty were ranked in the top three, respectively.
Lipscomb faces Murray State 1 p.m. Friday at Ensworth High School for their fourth match of the season.
Photo courtesy of Lipscomb Athletics