UW Oshkosh tennis concluded its fall season this past weekend in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) championships with a fifth place finish in Madison.

The team’s fifth place finish was two places higher than last year, a fact that head coach Steve Francour found to be “a testament to the team.”

Despite possible problems resulting from such a large incoming group, and changes in leadership for upperclassmen athletes, the team came together and was capable of outperforming themselves from previous years.

Francour said the team’s ability to gel with one another helped them heading into the WIAC championships.

“Our success is due to the team’s chemistry,” he said. “It’s not always a given that new people come in and everything works out. New players have to get used to being in college and college-level athletics, and returners had a new coach and new teammates, and the ladies did an impeccable job.”

Coming into the meet, the team’s goal was to maintain their status by taking out teams they defeated in the past while trying their best against teams that had beaten them. 

This plan was carried out by efforts of the players, namely Cordelia Damkot.

Damkot had her win against UW-Stevens Point’s Barbara Covek who she had lost to previously. 

Francour considers her ability to get over those possible anxieties to move on and even win the match is very showing of her character as a player.

“To get that loss out of her head was a testament to her mental fortitude,” he said.

He also pointed out doubles efforts from Jenna Nolde and Courtney Carpenter in their doubles

matches.

Earning fifth place took great efforts from the team. In order to see all performances from the Titans, visit the UWO athletics website.

Now begins the five month period of building up team performance for the spring. Through improvement in the veil of not playing, Francour plans to help the team in whatever way he can.

“We’re going to start our off season conditioning, making ourselves stronger and faster,” he said. “We’ll be making technical changes to how people are playing in the non-competitive time.”

The team will make the most of this period. Since they won’t have to worry about immediate competition, they are allowed greater periods of reflection and change in order to be the best athletes and competitors out there.

The UWO tennis team will be in its off season until the spring, improving in whatever way they can in order to continue on the road to better results. The vision that the coach has for his athletes is that they continue to build and start off their next semester with solid foundations, something that the program did not have initially this year with new coaching and many new players.

“We can build off of this recent success and bring in new players to continue the growth of the program,” Francour said.