Tennis

Mitchell adjusts to team atmosphere as SU freshman

Nicole Mitchell really started to notice the difference when she went home to California for Thanksgiving break.

She missed her friends and mentors from Syracuse. She didn’t have her teammates by her side, pushing her in workouts and competing against her in practice. No one was there shouting, “Let’s go, Nicole” to finish a last set. It was a return to her old tennis life.

For Mitchell, being a part of a team is new and one reason she came to college.

While attending Sonoma (California) Academy, Mitchell didn’t play for a team or enter tournaments as a part of a doubles tandem. At Syracuse, she’s adjusting to playing on a team, learning to maximize her size advantage and working to improve with a doubles partner instead of solely by herself. As the Orange’s lone freshman, Mitchell swept her five singles matches in the fall and is 2-1 in her singles matches in the spring season.

Mitchell has always been dominant on her own, but now she has to integrate it with a team.



“I’d see friends at tournaments and stuff, but all training was alone all the time,” Mitchell said. “Now, practicing with the team is a lot better.”

In high school, Mitchell traveled globally in pursuit of tennis competition and tougher tournaments. Russia, Ukraine, Spain and Austria were just a few stops. She decided she wanted to keep traveling, so she focused on East Coast schools and Syracuse’s program emerged.

She now shows up to Manley Field House every day with an unpredictable challenge that she hasn’t had in the past. She has a head coach in Younes Limam who assigns game situations, drills or workouts to her right when she gets to practice, with no advance notice what a practice will consist of.
Despite the change, she’s meshed into the team so well some even forget she’s a freshman.

“I tell her all the time, ‘I consider you like a sophomore,’” said Mitchell’s doubles partner, sophomore Olivia Messineo. “So for a freshman, she has done phenomenal. She came in ready to work.”

Mitchell usually uses her 5-foot-11 frame to bully opponents. But Limam sees a few minor changes to complement her size that could make her even more dominant.

“We’re focusing a lot on improving her serve because it can be a great weapon,” he said. “Also, using her backhand down the line and just being a little more aggressive overall.”

A tendency to hang back from the net and hit big smashes with her power has led to a little bit of timidity in Mitchell’s game as far as playing up on the net, but she’s working to improve it, starting in the doubles arena.

Still adjusting to playing doubles, Mitchell and Messineo are 0-2 with a “DNF” against South Florida, though they were trailing after the match was stopped because USF had already clinched the point.

“(Doubles are) a pretty big difference because you have to be at the net,” Mitchell said. “But you’re a team. You have a partner and you lean on each other and push each other throughout the match.”

Though Mitchell has practiced all her life to play individually on the tennis court, she’ll now know the experience of playing for a team. When she falls behind in a match, she’ll have something she’s never had before: A teammate may encourage her on, a voice familiar from practice. “Let’s go, Nicole.”

“It’s never easy to come in as a freshman, especially a part of being on a team because tennis is such an individual sport,” Limam said. “She’s definitely a team player.”





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