Developing A Championship Mentality

Women’s tennis adapts positive mindset, excels in multiple areas

Miglena Nenova

BUFFALO, NY - Champions speak with confidence, walk with a swagger, and play with one goal in mind: victory. The Buffalo Bulls women’s tennis team is speaking with that confidence, walking with that swagger, and has been raking in the victories.

“I was really trying to evaluate how to make the program better,” said head coach Kathy Twist. “Sometimes you think you need more equipment and more travel time and all that. That’s all important but this last couple of years, I was thinking that we need to change our mindset, we need to change the way we think. We need to start thinking like champions because that’s what I knew I had.”

Through showing footage of athletic greats like Andre Agassi and Maria Sharapova, Twist emphasized the importance of adapting a champion mindset to go along with the talent of the team that brought them to the Mid-American Conference Championships last May.

“We are one of three teams at UB that went to the finals in our conference—men’s soccer, men’s basketball and us,” Twist said. “It’s not easy to get there. The MAC is an extremely strong conference, with a couple of ranked teams nationally.”

This year’s team is comprised of diverse individuals from around the globe, including a trio of seniors. Miglena Nenova (Rousse, Bulgaria/Eurointellect), Katrin Fischer (Ternitz, Austria/Borg), and Natalie Dean (Feilding, New Zealand/Palmerston North) will all complete their careers at UB at the end of this season and expect to end on a high note.

Katrin Fischer

“We are all leaders on our team and we are all champions and we just want to get each one of us on the same goal,” Fischer said. “If we put everything that we are together, it’s going to be great.”

“I believe that you always have to believe in yourself,” Nenova added. “You always have to act like a champion, behave like a champion because that’s the only way that the mind will truly believe that you are a champion. You have to be able to do the whole thing in order to act like a champion on the court.”

Twist, the 2006 MAC Coach of the Year, has guided the women of the team to believe in themselves and become who they are, both on and off the court.

“She’s a very special woman,” Dean said. “She cares about us individually in all different dimensions—emotionally, educationally, socially, physically. She’s more than just Coach Twist. She wants to make not only great tennis players, but great people.”

Twist’s success in assisting her student-athletes in succeeding in all facets of their lives is evident in their academic accolades.

“Our team makes excellence a habit,” Twist said. “Our team GPA is 3.4. The previous semester it was 3.6, one of the highest at UB ever. They all understand that.”

The Bulls opened their MAC schedule this past weekend, downing Ball State 6-1 and Miami (OH) 5-2 to compile a 2-0 conference record. Buffalo is 10-1 on the season, including a win over nationally-ranked Syracuse earlier in the season.

Last season, the Bulls headed to Syracuse with a perfect record yet fell to the Orange, 6-1. This season was a different story, however, as Buffalo walked onto nationally-ranked Syracuse’s courts as a visitor and left as the victor, 4-3. After losing the doubles points, UB rallied in singles competition and earned points thanks to victories by Nenova, Fischer, junior Tina Jacob (Singapore/Raffles JC), and junior Smaranda Stan (Stantu Gheorghe, Bulgaria/Economic).

This was the first time in school history that Buffalo defeated a ranked opponent.

Natalie Dean

“It was a great feeling but it was something we expected to do,” Dean said. “We always set pretty high standards for ourselves and we always go out and compete to our very highest level. It was a great result but we don’t have big heads about it.”

Buffalo continued the momentum of downing Syracuse into its next matches, working up to a 6-0 record. Even though the season started off in perfect fashion, the individuals on the team recognize that there is still work to be done.

“We had a great start but that doesn’t mean that we can stop working,” Fischer said. “I think last year we were good but this year we also have the mental aspect of the game. We are ready to succeed and win and I think that’s a big step forward. I think we can beat the MAC teams and we can be MAC champions.”

The only team to step in the way of the Bulls becoming MAC Champions last year was the Western Michigan Broncos, which Buffalo will face this weekend. Nenova enters the weekend as the all time singles wins leader in UB history with 64 wins.

“That has never been my goal, to have the most wins,” said Nenova, who accomplished the feat against Colgate. “My goal has been to contribute to my team as much as I can.”

Junior Andreea Novaceanu (Bucharest, Romania/Emil Racovita) is back in the lineup for the Bulls, after being sidelined for the majority of the non-conference portion of the schedule. Also looking to assist in the continuation of UB’s unblemished conference record is freshman Denise Harijanto (Jakarta, Indonesia), who has accumulated 16 wins already this season. Stan leads the team in victories with 17.

The Bulls have also received depth from freshmen Diana Toia (Rochester, NY/Brighton) and Caitlin Turner (Victor, NY/Victor).

Individual accolades aside, there is one vision in mind for the women’s tennis team.

“We want to be MAC champions,” Fischer said. “To be MAC champions, you have to be committed every day, give your best every practice, and everything we do has to be with a purpose. We want to do it together as a team.”

Buffalo will continue its path towards the MAC Championships when the Bulls host the Bowling Green Falcons on Friday and then stage a rematch of last year’s MAC Championship versus Western Michigan on Saturday. Both matches are scheduled to be played on the Ellicott Tennis Courts with the Village Glen Tennis Center being the rain location.

03/27/2007