Colorado State University Athletics
Rams tennis travels to Provo for BYU Invitational
9/15/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Tennis
Sept. 15, 2009
Complete Release in PDF Format 
By Justin Warren
Athletic Media Relations
FORT COLLINS, Colo. - - Colorado Sate tennis travels to Provo, Utah, this week to compete in its first tournament of the 2009-10 season, the BYU Invitational. In the tournament the Rams will face Weber State, Utah State and Mountain West Conference rivals Utah, Wyoming and tournament host BYU.
“We will be playing against BYU and Utah who are in our conference, so it will give us a little preview of how we are doing right now,” Head Coach Jon Messick said. “It is going to be a long season but this will be a good start for us to see where we are at.”
Head Coach Jon Messick will bring his seven top players to Provo to play in both singles and doubles competition. Senior Laura Neal is expected to lead the team as the No. 4 seed for the tournament, while senior Kirsten Stople, junior Caitlin Fluegge, sophomore Tori Arneson, and CSU newcomer Melissa Holzinger will join Neal in the A singles bracket.
Competing in doubles competition will be the team of Neal and Arneson who finished 4-1 as a duo last season. Messick will also pair Stople and Lauren Mulhern who went 1-0 last season, as well as Fluegge and Veronika Wojakowska.
“We are trying to work out our doubles lineup so it will give us a chance to kind of see how the combination we put in this tournament will do,” Messick added. “We might change those next tournament but it will give us an idea of where we are at as far as doubles competition.”
In the 2008 BYU Invitational, the Rams finished with a victory in the backdraw competition by former Ram Greer Satherlie while being among the top three teams in the tournament.
CSU 2008-09 Season Review
The Colorado State women’s tennis team finished the season with an 8-13 record (2-7 MWC). The Rams finished seventh in the Mountain West Conference regular-season standings and competed in the quarterfinals at the MWC championship.
The Rams faced five nationally ranked teams consecutively from March 26 to April 10, including No. 26 TCU, No. 29 Denver and No. 46 Boise State. The Rams played a total of eight nationally ranked teams during the regular season. In addition to the tough conference schedule the Rams competed against a highly competitive non-conference slate, facing Kansas State, New Mexico State and Eastern Michigan.
The Rams played seven dual matches without a full-strength lineup, due to illness or injury. Fluegge missed all seven of those matches, which significantly affected the lineup. Despite the hardships, the Rams still were able to hold a 3-4 record during that stretch.
Doubles were more of a struggle for the Rams due to injuries. In response, the lineup had to be changed several times throughout the season. Even so, the Rams swept the doubles in three matches and won the doubles point a total of seven times.
The season also featured Arneson, the second-most successful freshman player, following in the footsteps of teammate Caitlin Fluegge, who earned the title the year before. Arneson led the team in overall wins with 29 dual singles/doubles victories (15 singles and 14 doubles).
Close behind Arneson, Neal finished with a total of 28 dual singles/doubles victories (13 singles and 15 doubles). Neal was named to the 2008-09 Mountain West all-conference singles team.
The Rams ended the regular season with a three-match winning streak and officially closed out the season at the MWC tournament.