2002 Furman Lady Paladin Outlook

2001: A season of triumph for the Furman University women's tennis team. The Lady Paladins claimed their fourth consecutive Southern Conference tournament championship, third straight regular season title, third straight trip to the NCAA tournament, and a No. 68 national ranking. Furman has also strung together a league record 32 consecutive conference victories, a streak dating back to a March 28, 1999, win over Davidson.

Although the season stands as one of the more successful in Lady Paladin tennis history and seems hard to top, Furman still seeks to substantiate itself as a national power by winning its first match in the NCAA's.

Furman will go into this season without former standouts Meredith Moore and Emelie Isaksson, who were both lost to graduation. The Lady Paladins do, however, return six players from last year's squad, thus rendering this a very experienced Furman women's tennis team.

Among those returning will be senior and three-time Southern Conference Player of the Year Megan Dunigan (Oak Ridge, Tenn.), one of the more highly decorated players in Furman history. Dunigan, who carries a 55-18 career singles record into the season and stands as only the second player in league history to win conference player of the year honors three consecutive years, was honored as the 2001 Southern Conference tournament Most Outstanding Player and was selected to the Verizon Academic All-District team.

Senior Gene Holman (Shelby, N.C.) has also fashioned an outstanding career as a Lady Paladin. She has garnered a 51-21 singles record during her tenure and registered key victories in dual match action last year against Clemson's Christina Oldock and North Carolina State's Jennifer Jassawalla.

Furman's bid for yet another banner year will hinge greatly upon the results of the Lady Paladin juniors, Natalie The (Lake Worth, Fla.) and Krista Thomson (Orchard Park, N.Y.). The, who won the Southern Conference Freshman of the Year award in 2000 and was the 2001 No. 3 singles flight champion, will look to build upon a solid sophomore campaign in which she recorded a 17-8 overall record and an undefeated conference mark. Thomson registered a 6-3 overall conference record and will look to provide depth at singles for the Lady Paladins.

Furman head coach Debbie Southern will look to sophomores Shellie Cochran (Dublin, Ga.) and McCall Holman (Shelby, N.C.), to solidify the Lady Paladins' hopes to add to their trophy case in 2002. Cochran played a key role during her freshman year, often filling in at the No. 6 singles slot as she tallied a 10-2 record at the position and 11-3 overall mark. Cochran also set a most impressive standard by ten times limiting her opponents to winning two games or less. The Lady Paladins will expect Holman to contribute at singles, as well.

Rounding out the Furman roster are three freshmen who will look to gain immediate playing time. Caroline Bentley (Huntsville, Ala.), who attended the prestigious Van der Meer Tennis Academy in Hilton Head, S.C. and graduated from Alabama's Huntsville High, placed second at the Southern Indoors (singles) in Memphis, Tenn., in 1999 and played No. 1 singles for the Alabama Junior Federation Cup Team. Mary Neill Hagood (Charleston, S.C.), a graduate of the Porter-Gaud School, achieved a No. 21 ranking in the Southern section and won the South Carolina Most Improved Player of the Year. Mary Kovarik (Oakton, Va.) will also look to shake up the Lady Paladin lineup. A James Madison High School alum, Kovarik trained at the Four Star Tennis Academy in Fairfax, Va., and has competed in Mid-Atlantic region and National tournaments. She has recorded wins over girls ranked in the top 50 in the country.

With the quality of player Furman demands being as high as it is, competition for playing time at singles will no doubt be stiff. Quite possibly even more difficult a task for coach Southern than constructing a singles lineup, however, will be to assemble suitable doubles teams. During the 2001 campaign, Furman successfully used 17 different tandems as the Lady Paladins tallied a 53-26 overall doubles record and won two of three doubles flights in the conference.

In addition to creating a formidable lineup and distributing playing time among the various members of the team, coach Southern must also prepare her Lady Paladins for a slate of difficult foes. The schedule this year features top competitors South Carolina, North Carolina State, Clemson, and Georgia Tech, a trip out west to face New Mexico and those participating in the UNLV Invitational, and an increasingly tough Southern Conference field.