Having just been hired in August, head coach of the women’s tennis team Sarah Ansboury has had a lot of ground to cover in preperation for the spring season.
Ansboury’s top priorities for her new job involve pushing her team to reach their full potential while making a smooth transition into her position as head coach and getting to know the players better.
“I have high expectations for the team. I think the biggest challenge is going to be demanding more from them each year without just coming into this program and changing everything,” said Ansboury. ”Our highest goal is to place in conference and this team has the potential to do that.”
Junior player Cat Goya agreed with those priorities.
“As a team we want to do our best in the Northwest Conference and make it to the championship tournament at the end of the season,” said Goya.
Goya believes that having the team get to know Sarah has been really important, and that Ansboury has been making an effort to reach out to her players to create a better relationship with them.
“It’s nice because Sarah really knows about fundamentals. She explains why we are doing a drill so we know what to take away from it and can really learn from it,” said Goya.
She also said that although the team is young experience wise, they have been working hard and can only improve and get better.
Because she was hired only a week before fall semester started, Ansboury said recruiting has definitely been one of her biggest challenges. Her goal for next fall is to have two solid recruits and she said lately, recruiting has been taking up a lot of her time.
Ansboury worked at the Club Green Meadows as the head professional tennis coach, which gave her many previous clients that she now sees playing at the collegiate level.
In the past, Ansboury coached some of the Pacific men’s tennis players and also used to teach two of the top women’s players from Linfield College.
“It will be weird competing against them and not coaching them,” said Ansboury.
She also said it is entirely different coaching at the college level rather than individuals at the club, but this is something she has wanted to do for a long time.
“It’s a different way of teaching. It’s more about the team and less about the individual. I want everyone to succeed and not just one person,” said Ansboury.
The women’s tennis season will begin this Sat. Feb. 19 against the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.Wash.
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