Off the back of a sunny, successful weekend for the Ball State’s women’s tennis team, the Cardinals face the Youngstown State Penguins Saturday.
Last Sunday saw the team play outdoors at the Cardinal Creek Tennis Center for the first time this season in a 7-0 win over IUPUI, but Ball State will be heading back indoors to the Northwest YMCA to play Youngstown State.
Head coach Max Norris, though, said the Cardinals should be prepared to deal with uncertainty if they want to win championships.
“If you can play in either setting and you can make your mind up that ‘It’s not that big of a difference’, you’re going to put yourself in a good position,” Norris said. “You can have an advantage of getting used to changing from indoors to outdoors, if you can accept it. So, I think it only helps us.”
Norris said Ball State's loss to Cincinnati two weeks ago, as a “fork in the road” moment for the team but their weekend performance suggested that they had taken the right path to recovery and that Youngstown State was the next stop on their way to being the best they can be.
“They’re a good team," Norris said. "They’ve won the Horizon League, something like three years in a row. Made the NCAA tournament obviously. Last year we played there and it was a very fun, competitive match so our team’s very excited to play them.”
Ball State has beaten Youngstown State twice in the past two seasons and the Penguins face Dayton on Friday evening before coming to Muncie. Going into these two matches, their record stands at 4-4, including a current three match losing streak.
With cold, wet weather expected for the rest of the week, the match on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. is scheduled to take place at Muncie's Northwest YMCA.
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