SEASON PREVIEW: Coach Goodwin Excited For What's In Store For Men's Tennis In 2024
1/11/2024 1:00:00 PM | Men's Tennis
Eagles return 10 players from last season's squad that won 15 matches, cracked ITA national rankings
STATESBORO - Georgia Southern men's tennis opens its dual match season on Friday at the University of Miami. First-year head coach Andrew Goodwin is excited about the prospects of the Eagles in the Spring of 2024 and expects the team to build upon the successes that the team showed last year on the court.
"My first few weeks on the job and in researching the job, I felt that the team's strength was the bond they had built together during last year," Goodwin said. "That's not something that can be built easily, it's special. So now I just want to emphasize the strengths they have and teach them how to use that."
In the 2023 Spring season, the Eagles went 15-8 overall and achieved a program-best No. 69 national ranking from the ITA. And with 10 returners from last season's squad, the opportunity is there for Georgia Southern to become one of those teams that consistently appears in the national rankings.
"The idea of a ranking at any point during the season or at the season's end is that it's a result of your body of work," Goodwin said. "And what your body of work is made up of is what you do every day. What kind of team are we going to be every day? Not just on our best days and not just on our worst days. Are we going to be willing to lay it on the line, address the task at hand and get it done no matter what's in front of us."
The Eagles return a pair of All-Sun Belt Conference players from 2023 in first-team singles honoree Pol del Castillo (Jr., Tarragona, Spain) and second-team singles honoree Pierre Mouesca (Soph., Biarritz, France). It was the first time that Georgia Southern had two All-Conference singles honorees since 2017.
In addition to Castillo and Mouesca, the Eagles also return three other players who notched 10+ dual match singles wins during 2023 - Dimitris Paliouras (Jr., Thessaloniki, Greece), Aaron James Williams (Soph., Dusseldorf, Germany) and Judson Blair (Sr., Salem, Ore.).
Also returning for the Eagles this season are brothers Jacob (Sr.) and Matthew Mitchell (Soph., Vidalia, Ga.), Alex Amacher (Jr., Dunwoody, Ga.), Alex Suk (Jr., Macon, Ga.) and Laurent Julia Calac (Jr., Reutlingen, Germany). The only newcomer for Georgia Southern is local product Holden Hall (Fr., Statesboro, Ga.)
The team had a competitive Fall campaign, playing in several events including the ITA All-Americans in Tulsa and the ITA Regionals in Atlanta. Coach Goodwin knows the Fall has laid the groundworks for what should be a successful Spring.
"It's fun playing in the Fall and seeing how the guys compete," Goodwin said. "But I think you're really going to see the team at its best when they're playing for each other. When they're pushing each other and fighting for each other. That's another reason why I'm really excited for us to get going this Spring."
A challenging dual match schedule has the Eagles away from Statesboro for seven of its first eight matches of the Spring. In addition to opening up the season against the Hurricanes, Georgia Southern will also play P5 matches against No. 19 Texas A&M, Clemson and UCF. The team hosts its first match at the Wallis Tennis Center on Wednesday, February 7 against in-state rival Kennesaw State .
Coach Goodwin has learned a lot about the Eagles in the short time he's been in Statesboro, and is ready for the team to show Eagle Nation that they are ready and willing to take the program to the next level.
"The thing I've learned the most from them is the appreciation they have for what they have here at Georgia Southern," Goodwin said. "They understand the great things that are happening at this University. They love it. And they are willing to work hard to improve. They've been open to pushing things to the next level. It hasn't always been easy, and they haven't always heard what they've wanted to hear. But they are driven to be as good as they can be. They're willing to do whatever it takes to get there."
