Feb. 13, 2006
Men’s Tennis Coach Kent DeMars
“We’re going to be leaving on Thursday to go to Seattle to play the National Indoor Team Championships which takes the top 16 teams in the country, and we need to travel all the way to Seattle to play Ole Miss. That’s who we drew in the tournament, and they’re seeded fifth in the tournament. We’re currently ranked 12th, and we hope we can survive the week. We’re a little banged up, but we’re looking forward to the match.”
“Our goal this year really is to make it to Stanford. There are a couple of things there, not only the Sweet 16 for tennis. Last year it was at A&M, and we made that tournament, and then we lost in the first round there. We feel like we’re a better team this year, and it’s kind of an interesting sight this year because, for the first time ever that the men and women are going to play the team and individual matches together. We feel like if we play to our capabilities, we’ll be there, and we say that because we’ve got a very good veteran team . We have five of our returning players from last year’s NCAA team back, and three of those players made the individuals at Nationals.”
“Tom Eklund is the consummate student-athlete. I think he’s a very good example. He is our senior captain, and he was ranked 15th in the country going into this year. He just won a post-graduate scholarship, and has always had a high GPA. Since he’s been here, the team has never had under a 3.0 GPA, so I think he’s been a good role model. The other highlight with our five players coming back is that we did bring in an additional player, a transfer who, a couple of years ago, was number one in the country, so we know he’s a good addition. We hope that will help us have an even better year.”
Women’s Golf Coach Kristi Coggins
“Women’s golf is in a really good place right now. Coming off of our fall season, we’re ranked 29th, not the ranking we’re looking for, but we did have a win in the fall at the ACC-SEC Challenge, and with that we had three players who were in contention to win the individual title, which is what championship teams are made of in golf.”
“We’re really looking forward to our spring. We travel to Puerto Rico on February 22 looking for that warm, 70 degree weather we had all December and January. We’re looking forward to that, it’s a good field down there.”
“From there, we host the Lady Gamecock Classic which is March 10-12. We’ve got a great field this year of 12 teams. It will be held at the University Club at Cobblestone Park, and it’s a Friday through Sunday event. We’re looking for the Lady Gamecocks to bring home that title. We do have six teams that are ranked in the top 30, so that’s going to be a great competition.”
“We feel like we’re in a really good place for our championship play as well. The SEC Championships are going to be held at Vanderbilt at The Legends Golf Course. We’ve had a lot of success there over the last few years. Then, our Regional, if we are selected to the East Regional, we will have played at that golf course Bryan Park in Greensboro, N.C., in April, so we will have a great advantage being on the golf course only a month prior to the Regional Championship to boost us into the National Championship at Ohio State University.”
“I really feel like we’ve got the makings of a great team. The characteristics of our 2002 SEC Championship team are within this team. The scoring averages for our top seven players are unbelievably close. We’re looking to bring the scores down a little bit. We’ve got three leaders on our team, Erica Battle, a senior from Irmo, S.C., Jenna Pearson, a junior from Wheaton, Ill., and Whitney Simons, a sophomore from Aiken, S.C. So we’ve got what it takes, and the girls are working hard.”
“We won the National GPA Award last year from women’s golf out of all the programs in the country with a 3.765 overall, and that was done with 11 players and six freshmen, so that tells you the dedication and determination of these young ladies on and off the golf course. So, our goal is to have our golf scores as low as our GPA is high.”
Men’s Golf Coach Puggy Blackmon
“This is my 11th year, and I’ve never really been as optimistic as I am right now about the squad we have. We have one senior, Eirik Johansen, who has just been a phenomenal player. He was an All-American his freshman year, and has been All-SEC every year after. He won the Norwegian Amateur and the Swiss Amateur, and he’s definitely on track to be an All-American this year. He’s had two top four finishes, a top ten, and a top 20 in five events. This is the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve felt comfortable naming a captain. He’s now our captain, and he’s done an incredible job with a very young group of kids. Eirik is the lone senior, and we’ve got basically freshmen and sophomores. Included in that group of freshmen is an impact player from Germany, Florian Fritsch.”
“In the first event out, we won the East Tennessee State event, The Ridges. Florian finished second there, and most recently finished sixth at the Mercedes Benz in Sawgrass where we finished third.”
“The great thing about this team, the thing that I love, is that we played in a lot of very tough weather. We just got back from Sawgrass where we played Sawgrass Country Club, and we ended up having 35-40 mile per hour winds on the first and third rounds. The kids hung tough, we had the low round of the week in the final round, and we beat Florida, Auburn, Tennessee, and pretty much everybody in the SEC so we’re off to a good start.”
“Again, I think we’ve got a team that can compete not only this year, but for years to come. We’ve pretty much dominated the state the last three years in recruiting. We’ve gotten the last three South Carolina Junior Champions, the last two South Carolina Junior Jay Haas Award winners for the top Junior player in the state, we’re mixing it in with a great group of international players, so we’ve got a great combination, and we’re looking forward to the rest of the season.”
“I expect us to do well in the conference at Sea Island this spring, and to win very quickly.”
Women’s Tennis Coach Arlo Elkins
“We’re currently ranked 27th in the country, but we feel we’re actually a lot better than that. For sure, I think, we’ll end up in the top 16 in the country with a chance to be in the top ten. To do that, however, we have to get everybody on our team healthy. We have three girls from the fall season who had surgery who aren’t 100 percent yet, but they’re getting there. Two of them are playing now, and actually our most valuable player from last year has yet to play a match. Hopefully, we’ll get her in a match in the next couple of weeks. As the year goes on, I think we’re going to be really tough to handle once everyone gets healthy and ready to play.”
“Returning from last year we have five of our top six girls, and we have added two freshmen to our team. One of them is Gira Schofield. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that she is the best freshman player I’ve had in the 23 years I’ve been here. We also have another freshman from Serbia, Natasa Vuckovic, who’s at the top of the lineup. They’re both excellent players, and very exciting to watch. In the fall, we had an individual tournament in the SEC with all the top players in the conference which is the toughest conference in the country, and Gira and Natasa actually reached the finals of the number one flight. Gira actually came out on top, but it was a great match, and it was a great pleasure for me to see two freshmen in that top flight final.”
“We’ve been off for a couple of weeks. We played last weekend at the University of Maryland where we played Michigan and Maryland, and we have a week off this weekend to get ready for Clemson which is next Sunday. We are currently 4-1, and four of the five teams we’ve played so far were NCAA Tournament teams last year. Our schedule is really tough, but we think we can handle it.”
Equestrian Coach Boo Duncan
“We are very excited to be coming off of a National Championship. We had a great year last year. One of the exciting things is that all of our participants in our National Championship endeavor last year return this year.”
“We just finished a fantastic meet against Auburn on Saturday where we rode extremely well. We weren’t sure we would be able to do that, but we did. We beat them by about 50 points when usually our meets against the top-ranked teams are within ten or 15 points, so to beat them by about 50 points was very exciting.”
“Our Hunt Seat team is currently 3-2 which doesn’t sound great, but we’re just getting ready to hit the meat of our competitions, and I think that record will be a lot better. We’re 2-1 in the SEC which we really like. In Western, we’re 4-1 so we’re very excited about that. Our Western team is a young team, and we have constantly been trying to improve that group of girls because our Hunt Seat team is so strong. The Western team is 2-1 in the SEC as well.”
“As far as recruiting goes, we did bring in a freshman in January that we weren’t able to talk a whole lot about in the fall, but Katie Grossnickle has been added to our team, and she has been a top-five youth Western competitor for at least the last four years. We’re really excited to have her. We’ve already signed four girls for next year, and we’re hoping to sign at least six more in the spring. We should have a very strong incoming freshman class.”
“We have 29 girls on our team, and our GPA was 3.25, and we’re really excited about that.”
“Our National Championship is in Albuquerque, N.M., in April. It’s going to be a different format this year, but it’s a format we’ve been competing in for the last three years. Whether or not we repeat our national title remains to be seen, but I think we’ve got a great shot at it. I think both the Western and the Hunt Seat teams are very strong, and we’re just looking forward to competing for the rest of the spring.”
Softball Coach Joyce Compton
“We, too, came off our best fall GPA of 3.5, and our goal is to have our team batting average around .350.”
“We got the season off to a good start on Friday. We got two wins, including one from Melanie Henkes, one of our seniors, and one of two of our pitchers who had arm surgery last year. I just told her today that one of the doctors thought she might not ever be able to pitch again, but she definitely came back and worked her tail off all summer and all fall, and threw a really good game on Friday. Another pitcher, Jessica Barnes, threw a few innings. She’ll be back, and I think she’ll be back as strong as we had hoped to have her last year.”
“In our starting lineup we have three freshmen who I think will be a big part of our team this season. Christie Hamilton, a pitcher who I think will be a special player for us, will be playing for us when she’s not pitching, and we’ve never had a player here who has done that. Jacqueline Wetherbee will be at first base, and when she figures out that we’re three feet farther back in college, she’s going to hit the seams off the ball; she may have the best bat speed on our team. Also, our second baseman Ashton Payne could be the fastest player we’ve had here.”
“Ashley Smith, our catcher and our other senior, is coming off a junior year where she won the SEC Scholar Athlete of the Year for the second year in a row as a 4.0 engineering student.”
“We are still relatively young. We can start an infield with three freshmen and a junior, and in the outfield we could have two sophomores and a junior. Overall we’re a young team, but I think we’re going to be a very exciting team. We just have to get the bats working.”
“I honestly like this team. I like what I feel we’re going to be able to accomplish. Offensively, I think we will be a better team than we were this past weekend. I think we were trying to take out all the disappointments of last year in one weekend.”
Track and Field Coach Curtis Frye
“My assistant head coach, Delethea Quarles, is probably most responsible for the number one ranking because she’s coaching probably the number one track athlete we have in our program, Chelsea Hammond.”
“We have a 3.2 GPA for our women’s team of 53 students, and our 35 male students had a 3.1. We had five men and four women who had a 4.0. 35 kids had a 3.5 or better, so on that end we’re winning.”
“This week we went to Arkansas and competed against the University of Texas, Stanford, Michigan, and 35 others. We fared quite well. We’re probably going to be ranked number three after this weekend because those teams got it done. We got some things done. At the end of the season I think we can still be National Champions.”
“Our men’s team is No. 15 in the country. We have a shot at being better than that, but we could be worse. We’re trying to be in the top five in the conference.”
“We’re making the decision in women’s track of do we try to win the National Championship, or do we try to win the SEC, and it’s very difficult to do both. There are ten days apart from the conference and nationals, and we’ll talk about which one is most important. Last year, we tried to have everything, and we came up short at nationals. I think we were a little tired and injured, and, if we hadn’t loaded up quite so hard for the conference, maybe we could have been National Champions in outdoor.”
