Doubles your pleasure

Janis Holcombe / contributing photographer Jnuior Mary Napier prepares to serve, while senior Kristin Nordstrom awaits the return at the net. Napier and Nordstrom are undefeated.

The JMU women’s tennis team’s undefeated record this spring points to the obvious — the team is doing something right. They’re winning.

While the team is undefeated, there are two individual players who aren’t losing at all.

Junior No. 2 player Kristin Nordstrom and sophomore No. 5 player Mary Napier have not lost a match this spring in singles, or as partners in the No. 2 doubles position.

Coach Maria Malerba paired Nordstrom with Napier when Napier came in as a freshman.

"I pair the players up using two things: personality and game style," Malerba said. "Kristin came in with good doubles skills, and Mary is just a natural athlete. She is a natural doubles player, but hadn’t had the opportunity to play as much doubles as Kristin.

Napier has good instincts to go along with her athletics — she is good at anticipating where the ball is going. Nordstrom compliments Napier’s natural instinct with intelligence — she can always figure out what is going on and doesn’t make a lot of unforced errors, Malerba said.

Nordstrom said, "We clicked right away as partners, and there has been nothing but improvement since then."

Nordstrom and Napier ended the fall with a record of 8-4, but have improved to 13-4 since dual matches started this spring.

"Kristin and Mary both deserve to be undefeated," Malerba said. "They have worked incredibly hard. The whole team has worked really hard, and that’s why we’re 6-0 at this point."

Nordstrom said, "The biggest difference between now and the fall is that we have worked a lot harder on doubles. In the fall it is all tournament play, but in the spring we play all dual matches, so we know we have to win our doubles in order to get the doubles point."

In collegiate tennis, whichever team wins two out of the three doubles matches is allotted one doubles point, breaking a possible tie between the six singles matches.

"Kristin and Mary are a good combination," Malerba said. "Their games compliment each other. Since Mary is a year younger than Kristin, she has been able to learn a lot from Kristin."

Napier said, "We’ve definitely had some tough matches. Those [matches] have helped us build our confidence, because we know that we can pick our level of play up."

Nordstrom and Napier will be able to test that confidence in their upcoming matches.

"We’ve had some of our tough matches rained out this season, which is frustrating," Napier said. "Going into the Colonial Athletic Association tournament we haven’t played all of our opponents, so it should make things interesting."

As the team readies for their final matches of the season, both Napier and Nordstrom insist that they aren’t feeling a lot of pressure.

Nordstrom said, "Being undefeated isn’t something we think about a lot. It’s most important for us to think about the team, each match is really important and it doesn’t matter who finishes first or last, because each match counts."

Each match will count if the Dukes meet their biggest rival, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, in the CAA tournament.

Malerba said, "It’s going to be a battle between us and UNC-W for the fourth and fifth seed in the tournament. It has been like that for a number of years, and the matches are always pretty intense. It always comes down to the last match."

Based on their results thus far this season, the Dukes can be confident that if that last match comes down to Napier or Nordstrom, they should be in pretty good shapea