It's a month or two after most other teams, but whatever, there is Stanford women's tennis today. Today! At 2:00pm! After nearly a year without it, an actual tennis match with Stanford and an actual other team will take place. At Stanford.
We're playing Santa Clara, who is not great (though Maddie Pothoff remains a dangerous player). But there's a little family drama here nonetheless--Santa Clara freshman JennaMarie Gordon is our Michaela's younger sister, and she transferred from Gonzaga after not playing in the covid-shortened season.
Since the result isn't in doubt, I'm mostly curious about our lineup and how it shakes out after Michaela Gordon at #1. Does Blake jump ahead of Arbuthnott at #2? Does Shin drop down in the lineup rather than stay at 4? Do the freshman crack the lineup, and if so, where? Do we even see Emma Higuchi in the lineup? (I kind of think her time has come and gone at #6, what with the need to get not just our freshmen some match experience, but to help develop players like Madurawe and Mossmer, who have seen minimal time and whose ceilings are likely higher than Higuchi's if they were given more matches.) And what are the doubles pairings?
As always, we cheerfully defer to Lele, because there's not a coach at Stanford who has more thoroughly earned the benefit of the doubt on lineup decisions. I'm just curious to see what the lineup shows about Lele's perception of how each player has improved/regressed through this pandemic, and how she is deciding to balance a certain known level of performance with allowing for more development of other players. I'd like to see Houghton and Geller both in the lineup, frankly, but that's from a pre-covid outsider's view.
So happy that we get to wonder about these things again, my friends. The world is still rough out there, and things are hard, but this is one more small ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds.
We're playing Santa Clara, who is not great (though Maddie Pothoff remains a dangerous player). But there's a little family drama here nonetheless--Santa Clara freshman JennaMarie Gordon is our Michaela's younger sister, and she transferred from Gonzaga after not playing in the covid-shortened season.
Since the result isn't in doubt, I'm mostly curious about our lineup and how it shakes out after Michaela Gordon at #1. Does Blake jump ahead of Arbuthnott at #2? Does Shin drop down in the lineup rather than stay at 4? Do the freshman crack the lineup, and if so, where? Do we even see Emma Higuchi in the lineup? (I kind of think her time has come and gone at #6, what with the need to get not just our freshmen some match experience, but to help develop players like Madurawe and Mossmer, who have seen minimal time and whose ceilings are likely higher than Higuchi's if they were given more matches.) And what are the doubles pairings?
As always, we cheerfully defer to Lele, because there's not a coach at Stanford who has more thoroughly earned the benefit of the doubt on lineup decisions. I'm just curious to see what the lineup shows about Lele's perception of how each player has improved/regressed through this pandemic, and how she is deciding to balance a certain known level of performance with allowing for more development of other players. I'd like to see Houghton and Geller both in the lineup, frankly, but that's from a pre-covid outsider's view.
So happy that we get to wonder about these things again, my friends. The world is still rough out there, and things are hard, but this is one more small ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds.