When a team loses their first five matches of the season, they normally don’t have high expectations the rest of the year. That was not the case for the Mesa College women’s tennis team.
First year head coach Marc Pinckney inherited a team in shambles. He implemented a new training program and that completely turned the team around. It took a few matches to start winning, but once they started winning, they didn’t stop.
Mesa finished 11-6 overall and 9-3 in conference. Two of the conference losses were to Grossmont and Imperial Valley with final scores of 5-4. The team finished second in the conference so those losses could have cost them.
The team is now going to play in the Ojai Tournament which is one of the biggest championships in tennis. Besides including community college championships, it also has tournaments for high school, Division III, and the Pac-12 conference among others.
For community college, it is the road to the state championship. The quarterfinals are first, and winning there will send you to state.
“If we advance anybody I’d be happy. We have one player, Sophia Najera who has a pretty good shot to make state,” said Pinckney. Najera is just a freshman who is the team’s number one singles and doubles player. Najera has Division 1 talent and on March 11 was named Pacific Coast Athletic Conference Athlete of the Week.
The team won 11 of their last 12 and joining Najera are freshmen Shannon McElhaney, Corrine Rivera, and Anastasiya Trachenko: and sophomores Erika Castro and Vanessa Duenas. They all played key roles on this team and finished the year on a roll.
“It took a while for the players to figure out what we are doing Culture change is hard,” said Pinckney, “I feel they did a good job the second half of the season. The first half of the season was a trainwreck.”
It is rare in any sport for a team to have a bad start and still recover. The future at Mesa is very bright for the women’s tennis team. Next season they will lose Erika Castro and Vanessa Duenas, but all of the other players will still have eligibility remaining.
Coach Pinckney wants to, “Win them all” next season and that could happen after what they did in the second half of the season.