University of Minnesota Athletics
Women's Tennis Season Blog: Yuliana Umanets
2/8/2012 12:00:00 AM | Tennis
Feb. 8, 2012
Updated Season Stats | Gopher Women's Tennis Facebook Page
Gophers Top No. 50 William & Mary 5-2, Move to 3-0 | No. 28 Washington Deals Minnesota Season's First Loss
Hello dear Gopher tennis fans! It's a big pleasure for me to write for you and tell you about our on-court and off-court advantages. I hope that all of you enjoyed watching our matches this weekend.
First of all, I want to thank everybody who came to cheer for us on our Friday and Sunday matches. All the girls really appreciate your dedication and support. It is very important for us to see all of you in order to compete hard and show our best! Also, I want to thank all the girls' families who are coming to our matches and bringing us some cakes. They are actually very delicious, so thank all of you for doing that!
I feel that this season is going to be an awesome for us. We are so motivated right now. Everybody is very dedicated to the team in and out of court. Every day we are practicing as hard as it possible to make our team better and stronger! Each practice we compete with each other as if it is a dual match, which really helps us to become confident players. We all moving in the same direction, following the same responsibilities, and have the same goals, which makes our team very united.
Before our matches we have the "confidence" practice, where we have a chance to warm-up, improve some shots, and become pumped up about our future match. We had some of these practices before our Friday match. After the practice we have some free time to prepare mentally and physically for battle.
As my teammate Ellie mentioned in her previous blog, we now have a new pre-match tradition, where one of us needs to inspire the team. On Friday, it was Alexa Palen's turn to do that. This girl has shown a strong dedication and love to this team from the very first time I met her.
Here some sentences from Alexa's speech: "Our season awaits us Gophs. Our fight, our confidence, our willingness to work hard for every single ball…our desire and our dedication. Our hope and faith. Our work ethic. Everything we put into becoming a great team...this is it. These are shaping who we are...not only as individuals, but as a team…this is our time and this is our team. This our privilege. Side by side, we will fight together. Side by side, we will dominate together. Side by side."
These were the words after which we very ready to break all our opponents. That night was William and Mary's turn. On Friday night there was a battle in the Baseline Tennis Center between two great teams and I am very proud that we won this battle. We showed an awesome desire to win, each of us paid the price mentally and physically in order to be the winners that night! After the match all the team went to the dinner, were we had some time to celebrate our victory!
On Sunday morning Pauline Gilbert showed us a very nice video which she created by herself. It included the photos of team members and the moments of celebrating the victory by different famous tennis players. This video was very sweet, so now we are going to show it during our banquet at the end of semester.
On Sunday we played against Washington. I think that we showed a high level of support and fight! I feel that all of us were very appreciative of the opportunity to represent the U of M on the court, and on each court we showed a great desire to win.
I like the saying, "Success is like a ladder you cannot climb with your hands in your pockets." Every day we will work hard to become smarter, better, and stronger. We set up our goal, which we are going to achieve until the end of this semester. I'm very excited to see all of you for our next matches and thank you again for helping and supporting us!
Thank you.
Go Gophers!!!
Players Mentioned
