Good teams win when things are going well. Great teams win when they're not going well.
According to that definition, the women's tennis team has been a great one this season.
Despite playing most of the year without the services of their top player, senior Christine Neuman, the Blue Devils have managed to stay in the nation's top 10 for most of the season.
With the injury to Neuman and the ineligibility of junior Kellie-Anne Johnston, who has to sit out a year after transferring from Southern Methodist, the Blue Devils entered the spring season only six players deep. That lack of depth proved costly for Duke in early March, as the team lost four games in 10 days. But the Blue Devils refused to give up and instead used their losses to build momentum for the remainder of the season.
"Earlier in March, we took our lumps and lost a few matches, and easily could have folded our tents," head coach Geoff Macdonald said. "That's just not what occurred. The team has [instead] been gaining and improving.
"We've learned a lot from the early part of the season about what it would take to be a really good team," junior Wendy Lyons said. "We had a few losses at the beginning that really hurt, but we learned from those and put them into work in practice. In a way, good came out of them."
One of the main reasons cited for Duke's success is the camaraderie the players have developed.
"We do stuff as a team not only at tennis and on the court, but off the court," Lyons said. "There's so much concern for each other. I think just the whole team spirit pays off in whatever we're doing."
The benefits of the Blue Devils' hard work was most recently seen last weekend in the team's stunning upset of No. 4 Florida, a team that Duke had never previously defeated.
"Against Florida, we went out there with the attitude that they were going to have to put all they had into it in order to beat us," Lyons said.
Yet Macdonald immediately warned the team not to become too comfortable with its victory over the Gators.
"We talked right away about what are the traps," Macdonald said. "Complacency is one. You have to remember how you won."
Duke enters the home stretch of the season with four straight matches against Atlantic Coast Conference opponents. Unlike the past few years, in which conference opponents meant easy wins, this year the Blue Devils will face a much improved ACC.
"One thing that makes winning in the conference more difficult is that the conference is [now] very good," Macdonald said.
The first test in their four-match series is against North Carolina. Although their women's tennis team is not one of the most revered in the country, the Tar Heels always serve as tough competition for the Blue Devils.
"With a team like UNC, with the rivalry between Duke and UNC, we're going to have to have that same feeling [as we did against Florida]," Lyons said. "Their team isn't seen as being one of the top ones in the ACC, but everyone's gunning for us now. We have to keep that feeling of what it's like to lay it all out on the line. I think that's really going to be important against UNC because they seem to really get up for matches against us."
Even more important for Duke will be its upcoming matches against Clemson and Florida State this coming weekend. Both teams are ranked in the top 30 this season, and the Tigers have become the Blue Devils' rivals in women's tennis the past few years.
"We have a really large rivalry with Clemson or Wake, some of the teams that are more competitive nationally. Clemson is probably our toughest rival in the conference," Lyons said.
Yet Macdonald believes that if the team continues with it's current state of mind, the Blue Devils will have a bright future.
"If we can keep improving and stay healthy, we'll be a very good team in April and May," Macdonald said.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.