New school, new outlook, new results.
That's the best way to describe the early progress of Duke tennis player Julie DeRoo, who transferred at the beginning of the school year from Ole Miss and won the Omni Hotels Southeast Region Championships Monday, her first tournament victory since becoming a Blue Devil and her 10th straight match win overall. DeRoo easily disposed of Wake Forest's Janet Bergman 6-2, 6-2 in the semifinals during the morning and maintained her solid play throughout the afternoon, winning a three-set battle with 27th-ranked Sarah Witten of Kentucky to take the title.
After winning the first set 6-2 in a similar fashion to her match against Bergman, DeRoo suffered her first setback of the day when she lost a competitive tiebreak to Witten in the second set 9-7. But solid serving allowed the Ecully, France, native to regain her composure in the final set, and the junior promptly closed out Witten 6-3 to win the tourney.
With the victory, DeRoo automatically qualifies for the ITA Indoor Championships in Dallas next weekend, an accomplishment she believes she has reached in large part because of her transfer to Duke.
"I prefer [Duke]," DeRoo said unequivocally. "I like the practices, I like the fact that it's competitive, [and] I like the fact that the coaches are open to suggestions. I like everything about it. I'm happier here than I was at Ole Miss."
While DeRoo remains content with her new situation at Duke, coach Jamie Ashworth is excited that he has three players who have emerged as viable contenders for the top seed once the spring season approaches. Despite losing last year's No. 1 player Ansley Cargill to the professional ranks, the Blue Devils' singles depth has proven to be quite formidable, as sophomore Amanda Johnson, freshman Kelly McCain, and DeRoo will all compete for the top spot.
Needless to say, Ashworth is salivating at the possibilities that this depth will provide his team.
"I think you could justify putting any one of them at [number] one and I think you could justify putting any one of them at three," Ashworth said of Johnson, DeRoo and McCain. "We've had two players in the past who we've done that with, but we've never had three players to be able to do that. So I think that's going to be great for our team. We can change our lineup around a little bit, depending on game styles, and always keeping our opponents guessing so we don't have the same lineup everyday."
Of course, not all the news coming out of Winston-Salem was positive for the Blue Devils. In particular, Johnson, who entered the tournament seeded No. 1, was upset in the opening round of the tourney by Wake's Katie Martzolf. As a result, Johnson, along with McCain, will wait to see if the ITA grants her a bid to the Indoors next weekend.
Ashworth also expressed some concern about the fact that none of Duke's newly configured doubles teams made it to Monday. However, he believes this is simply a product of the doubles teams still getting to know each other's on-court tendencies.
"We'll take the next two months before we play a team match and really try to come up with the right combinations," Ashworth said. "It's been hard also with injuries--Katie Granson hasn't been able to play and in the past two years, she's been a big part of our doubles. She's just starting to play this week, so we'll have to mix her in there.
"That will certainly take a lot of pressure off our singles, because the way we've been playing singles, we should be able to win three singles every match."
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