Southeast women's tennis season starts today in Iowa

~ First-Year coach Leah Hottois has just two returning players

Dwelling on the past is not something first-year Southeast Missouri State tennis coach Leah Hottois and her team are going to do as they enter their season.

The Redhawks finished 4-11 last year and have not won more than five matches in any of the last five seasons.

"I try not to dwell on what happened in the past," Hottois said. "I can only affect what's going on in the future. Right now I just want to have a team that has a positive attitude, that feels that they can go out and compete at a successful level ... a high, successful level. I want my girls to feel that the practices are beneficial. I want them to feel that I support them as well as their teammates supporting them on the court, and I just want everyone to have a positive attitude and strive for success."

Southeast opens its season at noon today in Ames, Iowa, with a match against the University of Nebraska-Omaha.

The Redhawks will then face Iowa State at 9 a.m. Friday and Northern Iowa at 4 p.m.

"Since I haven't really seen the other teams and I don't know too much about them particularly, I can't really say how I think we're going to finish," Hottois said. "But I'm optimistic. I'm very excited to see how my team is going to compete this weekend."

Southeast returns just two members of last year's squad: senior Heather Robinson and junior Melissa Martin.

The rest of the team consists of one sophomore and five freshmen. Katy Brady, a sophomore from Farmington, Mo., joins the team as well as the freshmen Ekaterina Donetskova, Valeriia Kashina, Valeriia Nagovitcina and Annisa Warasanti. Donetskova is from Samara, Russia; Kashina and Nagovitcina are from Togliatti, Russia, and Warasanti is from Bandung, Indonesia.

Robinson was 13-4 in singles matches last season, a team-best, and 7-2 against Ohio Valley Conference opponents. She was 8-8 in doubles competition.

Martin was 13-9 in singles last year and went 4-2 in doubles competition last fall.

The Redhawks competed in three tournaments last fall. At the Austin Peay Fall Tournament, Warasanti went 4-0 and won the Division 3 singles competition. Southeast also competed at the UT Martin tournament and Arkansas State tournament.

Hottois believes the experience of fall competition benefited her young team.

"They learned that they have to be mentally tough on the court because in juniors you can play players that will give you matches and give you points -- in college that doesn't happen," Hottois said. "They learned to be more focused, they learned to be more mentally tough, they learned that they need to finish points and not to wait for someone to give them points."

Robinson feels Hottois is a good fit for the program that has not renewed the contracts of its coaches the past two years.

"It's been a pretty easy transition," Robinson said. "In general as a team, I think Coach Hottois is a good leader. The practices have been good. I feel like she's a lot more competent than some of the previous coaches we've had, so I think we have a really good chance of winning."