2018 Women’s Season Preview: #2 Emory University

EEEEEEEEEEEEE! That was me doing that eagle sound that can sometimes be heard coming from the Emory camp. (Do they still do that? Am I dating myself here?) After procrastinating with a shameful amount of Hallmark Christmas movies, I’m finally sitting down to write the first women’s season preview of the 2017-18 season and making eagle noises seemed the most logical way to pump myself up. For those of you who just want the pure adrenaline rush of eagle screeching without straining those vocal cords, listen to 10 hours of eagle sounds here ->  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IJb47K35xM. You’re welcome.

I’m kicking off my previews with the ASouth women’s standouts of the fall season, Emory! Since this is my first ever season preview and I kind of want to get back to my crappy Hallmark Christmas movies, I’m going to rip off the format from the men’s side instead of coming up with something of my own. Even though I’m all about making the bold predictions, I’m going to play my newbie card and refrain from projecting lineups this year because I would be able to do maybe #1 and #2 singles and #1 doubles and after that I would arrange the names in alphabetical order or go solely off of UTR.  This may or may not be how some coaches create their lineups, but 1) it doesn’t involve any real analysis on my part and hence is difficult to write about and 2) is boring for you to read. I also don’t want to be embarrassed by how wrong I am in the spring.

As always, if I forget someone or missed something, please let me know in the comments! Now that I’ve tempered your expectations, let’s do this.

Quick Facts: 

Location: Druid Hills, Georgia

Coach: Amy Bryant (19^th year!!)

2017 Year End ITA National Ranking: 2

2017 Year End ITA Regional Ranking: 1

Twitter Handle: @EmoryWTennis

Hashtag: It seems like #flyhigher or #eaglesflyhigher seem to be a recurring thing. If they are looking for new ones may I suggest #ladybirds or simply #EEEEEEEEEEEEE

UTR Power 6: 56

Last season the Eagles made it to the NCAA championship match before falling to Williams in a 5-4 nail biter. They also claimed the UAA conference title and the ITA Indoor Championships, amassing a 15-2 record against D3 opponents.

Key Losses: Emory took a huge hit with graduation last year with the departure of 5 starting seniors: Michelle Satterfield (2 singles, 2 doubles), Katarina Su (4 singles, 1 doubles), Melissa Goodman (5 singles), Michelle DeMeo (3 doubles), and Paula Castro (6 singles, 3 doubles). That’s a lot of spots that will need to be filled this season! These seniors won 2 NCAA titles during their time at Emory (with the exception of Puala Castro who transferred from UAB after her sophomore year), and tons of individual honors between them. Satterfield was a 4 time singles, 2 time doubles All-American, while Su was a 3 time doubles All-American. They will surely be missed.

Key Gains: Emory welcomed 5 freshman this year, which is just enough, at least based on numbers, to fill the gaps left by the graduating seniors.  They should be happy with that much talent to pull from but only time will tell if all 5 freshman become starters. The newcomers are, in alphabetical order: Katie Chang (3 star, UTR 9.14), Ysabel Gonzalez-Rico (5 star, UTR 10.99), Sasha Hartje (3 star, UTR 8.5), Defne Olcay (foreign so no TR ranking, UTR 9.13), and Stephanie Taylor (4 star, UTR 8.78).

This Year So Far: After a dominant performance at regionals, freshman Ysabel Gonzalez-Rico and senior Bridget Harding made the trip

to Rome, Georgia for the ITA Oracle Cup where Gonzalez-Rico made it to the singles finals and partnered with Harding to make the doubles finals. Unfortunately for them they found themselves across the net from the intimidating Wesleyan superstars Eudice Chong and Victoria Yu, and they found out what basically everyone else feels like when they have to play against Emory. Other great performers from the fall season were junior Daniela Lopez who fell in the semis of ITAs and freshman Stephanie Taylor who made it to the quarters. On the doubles side of ITA’s, Emory had 3 doubles teams in the semifinals: Harding and Gonzalez-Rico were the eventual champions (losing just 7 games the entire tournament), while Lopez teamed with Defne Olcay (freshman) and Taylor paired with Emma Perelman (sophomore) to reach the semifinals.

Schedule:

The Eagle’s spring season starts in early February with some healthy D1 and NAIA competition in the forms of Georgia State, Coastal Carolina, Columbus State, Brenau, and SCAD. This is some intense warm up competition and we can probably expect the Eagles to take a loss or two, but the beauty of these matches is that they count for literally

nothing. Emory’s D3 competition starts in the form of the ITA National Indoor Championships, where they will look to defend their title as the No. 1 seed. I see no reason why they won’t defend their championship, and a win here will be a nice confidence boost as the team will probably already have their sights set on the 2018 NCAA championship.

Following indoors, the Eagles will take a trip out to southern California where their marquee match will be against No 3 CMS. Depending on how dominant Emory is at indoors, this could be their first true test of the season and I am expecting this to be a very close match given Emory’s relatively young/inexperienced team and CMS’s home court advantage.

After returning from spring break, they will play four D3 opponents before their UAA tournament – No 23. DePauw, No. 5 Bowdoin, No. 14 Amherst, and No. 7 Tufts. The Bowdoin, Amherst, and Tufts matches will all occur one after another and are either away or at neutral courts, and these matches will be very important in gauging how the Eagle’s will fare against the stiff Northeastern competition come championship season. I’m going to predict that the Eagle’s will lose one of these matches, but it will serve as healthy motivation into the post season.

At the end of April, Emory will finish their regular season in Altamonte Springs, FL with the UAA championships. Get this- since 1987 (as far back as I can find records), Emory has won UAAs every single year except 2010 and 2012, when Chicago won. That’s a lot of UAA championships. If history has any bearing, Emory will ease their way to a conference title again this year and in doing so secure a 1 seed in their NCAA regional.

Bold Predictions for the Freshmen: In order to put my personal D3ASW stamp of weirdness on this article, I’m going to make a bold prediction for each of the freshmen in my season previews. Since I spend so much time harping on how D3 athletes are so well rounded, my predictions may or may not have anything to do with tennis. I know the freshman have already been in college for a semester now and are basically seasoned veterans but I still wish to welcome them to the D3 community and extend my support and encouragement.  You’re doing great girls, keep it up. Let me know how accurate my predictions are!

Katie Chang: Will win every single bus ride game of Catchphrase, making her teammates wonder if she can read minds but she’s actually just that good

Ysabel Gonzales-Rico: Will have such a successful college tennis career that she’s the keynote speaker at her own graduation

Sasha Hartje: Will have a perfect 4.0 GPA throughout college.

Defne Olcay: Will break the current world record for “Most Tennis Balls Held in One Hand” by holding 27 tennis balls in one hand.

Stephanie Taylor: Will light up the dance floor at the 2018 UAA banquet by preemptively asking one of the Wash U men’s freshman to dance then completely showing them up with her break dancing skills, earning automatic UAA MVP

Conclusion:

Emory has returning rocks in the form of Harding and Lopez and brought in some great talent in the form of Gonzalez-Rico, Taylor, and friends. Yes, they suffered some losses to graduation but the beauty of being Emory is that you have at least 10 players at any given time that would be very good if not dominant at the lower spots in the lineup. In every D3 match across the board these girls play, they will never come up against an opponent where they are expected to lose (with, of course, the occasional exception eg Eudice). Since D3 tennis is a team sport, it will be very difficult for any other team to scrap together 5 wins on the same day.

It seems like the moral of the story is that Emory will be strong at every single position this year, which is no surprise considering their dominant presence in the D3 scene over the past decade or so. They won the NCAA championships in 2014 and 2016 and if the pattern sticks, the 2018 championship is theirs for the taking. I’m going to call it right now. Emory will win NCAA’s this year. My job here is done.

-D3ASW