Serving youth

Written by athletic communication student assistant Alyssa Jodarski

When you think of tennis, you think about winning and losing and service aces and errors. You may even think about championships and titles, such as the many Concordia Wisconsin's women's tennis team has been winning consistently for the past six years. The Falcons have either been conference champions or runner-up every year in that time frame.

What may not get thought of is what goes on behind the scenes. The long - hard practices - the sacrifices and the mentality that goes along with playing tennis. Loaded with a roster of youth, Concordia Wisconsin has to think about all of that, really focusing on the foundation of a program built on success. Now that the team is no longer consisting of mainly upperclassmen, the coaching staff and the student-athletes have to work that much harder to bring their "A-game."

Last year, the Falcons ended the season failing to hold a title for the first time after winning three-consecutive prior. At the end of the year, they graduated a pair of seniors that knew nothing but winning during their time, leaving a very young, lively roster eager to fill very big shoes. The 2019-20 roster consists of all freshmen and sophomores, except for one senior, and they have been successful in their own right during the fall, sporting a 10-2 record and an excellent performance at the ITA Midwest Regional.

During the recruiting process, knowing that there would be many positions to fill, head coach Steve Anschutz described his interaction with his now freshmen as straightforward, saying that "We went to the recruits and gave them honesty. We told them the situation, the cool things the team was doing, and that we needed someone to replace those graduating. We needed someone willing to work hard and want to win. Then we asked 'Are you that person?'"

Anschutz noted two things that stood out to him on the early success of this year's team. Speaking very highly of his players, he explained that "One, there is good, raw talent that we can build off of. Two, every player comes and works hard every day. We haven't had anyone even go 80 percent. Everyone comes and gives 100 percent every day."

Along with exceptional talent and a tough work ethic up and down the roster, Anschutz created a shift in culture starting on the very first day of practice. The ninth year leader, explained two terms important to him – culture and climate.

"Climate is the day to day basis. It's how we treat practices and how we treat matches. Culture is a whole week, month, or season of that climate. We decided what values and characteristics we want our players to have and learn through that climate. Where do we want to be? We figured out how to get there. It's mostly little things we do over time. We have special moments that we sprinkle in throughout to bring the culture back."

Working on climate has meant so much more to Anschutz than building up team morals. Speaking animatedly and passionately, he revealed, "This year we rebuilt the culture and a gap that was filled from past years was stretching, nutrition, mental attitude, sleeping and why these things are essential. The first week was culture, culture, culture. What can we do off of the court to help us succeed on the court, was something we concentrated on."

To build this culture, the first weeks of practice were filled with workshops that helped the players get to know each other, envision success and find their strengths and weaknesses. Freshman Antonina Sanna described one of the first team building workshops they completed during training camp as extremely valuable.

"One of the first things we did was a personality test. It allowed us get to know what people were like before we got to know them and give us insight into how they would react to certain situations."

The ITA Draw 8 Champion also vocalized, "Whenever we did the team workshops that pointed out someone's weakness, it wasn't to embarrass them, it was to figure out what we needed to work on. Someone might have the same weakness as another teammate. Then we would know we need to work on that as a team."

Anschutz further denoted how important culture was to him, beaming, "This is a huge development year. We need to build the right culture and focus now, so that the next three years take off on their own. If we have such accountability, ownership and success this year, then next year has to be that much better."

The culture and natural hard work of this team creates excitement for him. With a smile from ear-to-ear, he pointed out that "My phone goes off all morning with texts from the players asking for a private lesson. We're on the court 3-4 hours a day as a team and they still text me asking to do more."

The view that everyone on the team gives their all wasn't only reflected by Anschutz, but it was reflected by Rebekah Spiegelhoff, the lone senior on the team. She became excited, with her face lit up, saying, "We want to be better than the day before. We have a huge level of energy and we strive to do better. When the freshmen came in, we didn't push them to do this or that, we just showed up and showed them how it was. They just joined in to make us better. This is a huge advantage for us that it came naturally."

Being the only senior, Spiegelhoff can be seen as a leader on the team. While she has taken on this role, she hasn't changed anything drastically about how she conducts herself.

"I'm just being more vocal about it. We have sophomores on the team that I helped to lead last year. A season ago, I helped lead, but I wasn't the leader. The biggest thing I'm helping with is confidence building. The team has a lot of confidence building to do this year."

Anschutz spoke of Spiegelhoff's leadership qualities as well, sayng "Bekah is the loudest most vocal person on our team. She's in charge of that. She is that spirit of our team and we encourage her in that role." There isn't a specific leader or captain on the team, however, the coaches look at skills and abilities of the players and figure out who fits into different leadership roles.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to being such a youthful team. One of those challenges is harnessing the energy of the young players, as mentioned by Speigelhoff, who further explained that they don't have to control the energy, but learn how to bring it out and use it, which was greatly aided by the culture created during training camp.

Anschutz also felt it was less of an issue, deliberating, "There are ups and downs with youthfulness. Instead of riding that rollercoaster, we as coachers view it from a distance. We focus on that less and more on the culture. The rollercoaster doesn't matter then because with the culture, we're overall on a trend upward."

As a young team, the competition doesn't know the Falcons well going into a match, which can be a benefit. Sanna simplified, "Our coach is able to put together a really well-developed game plan because the other teams have more experienced players. We know what they are good at and their weaknesses going into a match. The other teams don't have that insight on us. They can't put a game plan together before we play them. They have to learn as they go."

Being such a fresh and young team, failure is a possibility, as it is all the time. Anschutz didn't shy away from talking about failure when sitting down to talk about his team, something the program hasn't had to experience much during his time as head coach.

"The biggest thing is, failure happens. We don't obsess about it because we focus on what we learned and not having it happen again. It can be long and hard for true change and meaning, especially for fight, vindictiveness and confidence."

Spiegelhoff bolstered this view when describing a talk that Anschutz had with the team about failure. He had asked them what made them, as a team, want to win more. She explained the team's answers as "Some people told us we can't win because of our youth. That made us want to win more because being told we're too new or young makes us want to succeed. We use that 'you can't' to fuel us."

She then went on to explain what success meant to her and it wasn't winning matches. The Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin native broke it down into a simplistic way saying, "If we fix one thing, its success. This is a long process to be successful. You have to work on it. When studying weaknesses, you find more strengths that help as well."

Anschutz provided great insight into how winning is viewed as well.

"Winning isn't in our control. What we do as coaches and players creates the culture and the results we want. We recruited players we knew would give us the results we wanted and those players that had talent. Now we are molding that talent and shaping them so that they can work harder than they ever thought they could. We focus less on the winning and more on the right things that lead to winning."

Sanna had an inspiring view of the team, seeing how successful they had been in the past years. Lighting up the room while speaking passionately, you could tell her heart was in the game of tennis.

"There's always the pressure of winning or losing. When you go out on the court, there's always going to be one winner and one loser. You don't want to be the loser, so you do your best to win. Whenever playing tennis you have to try your hardest and develop a good game plan to win and even if I do lose, just knowing that I'm out there doing my best, hitting shots I want to hit, and not making small mistakes, for my team. That's more of an accomplishment to me. I do think that every court, every point matters. Each player has to bring forth everything and do their best."