2008 Spring Season Outlook
The Golden Tigers are looking to improve their number 8 ranking this season following the addition of three strong freshmen to the squad. Shkurte Ejupi from Kosovo, Nelli Martirosyan from Armenia and Russian, Luba Orlova are the newcomers. They will be joining existing team members Paula Ghilardotti (Argentina), Diana Cardenas (Colombia), Jolene Wong (Singapore) and Natalia Aranguren (Colombia). The Tigers will miss the competitive fire of graduated senior Lindsay Woon but Coach Leslie feels that this squad is one of the strongest that he has coached. He commented that the Tigers will be very competitive all the way down the line-up and, once he has determined the doubles pairings, this important part of each match will be much improved.
The Tigers won the SSAC Championship in 2007 and are looking forward to defending their title this season. The conference is very strong as it contains the National Champions, AUM and three other teams that all competed in the National tournament (Berry College, Shorter College and Lee University).
The season kicks off with a match against Francis Marion University a NCAA Division 2 school in South Carolina before the team returns to Brenau to face Reinhardt College on February 12th in their home opener. The following day February 13th the Tigers face close rival North Georgia in another home match at Brenau courts. In the first week of March the team will travel to Florida for spring break competition playing five matches in a five day time span.
Critical matches to note on the calendar will Berry College, away on March 11th, Shorter College, away on March 17th and, the visit to Brenau of the National Champions AUM, on April 11th.
The Tigers also continue to excel in the classroom posting a team GPA of 3.68! They were named a NAIA Scholar Team last season and Paula Ghilardotti, Diana Cardenas, Natalia Aranguren and Brigid Hook (currently on a study-abroad program) were all named ITA scholar athletes.