Nicholls tennis teams look to put best foot forward while hosting tournament at new venue

The Nicholls tennis program expects no foot faults as it puts its best foot forward by showing off its new playing venue by hosting the Down the Bayou tournament Friday and Saturday at the Thibodaux Regional Sports Complex.

It’s the first time for Nicholls to showcase the sprawling tennis complex to others in a tournament format.

“This is the kickoff to the fall. We’re excited,” said Greg Harkins, coach of the Nicholls men’s and women’s tennis teams. “This will be our first event that we’ve hosted in recent years. We’re really excited to showcase a world-class facility. Thanks to Thibodaux Regional and the university coming together to give us this great facility.”

The Colonels will host both the men’s and women’s tennis teams from the University of New Orleans and Loyola.

“What we tried to do is bring in some local teams for our first event. We hope to expand it and have more events in the future. I used to run tournaments quite a bit. Our goal is to have separate men’s and women’s events at some point. We are really looking forward to that. That will be exciting.”

The format for the event will feature five brackets each for the men and women in single action, along with three brackets each for the men and women in doubles competition.

“In an event like this, we do a round-robin or compass-type format, so the kids will continually play,” Harkins explained. “Over the course of two days, they will get five to six matches, which is a lot of tennis.

“First ball will be at 8:30 a.m. on Friday. We will play throughout until about 3 p.m. We will start out with doubles, followed by a round a singles. We will take a quick, little break for lunch and finish up with another round of singles. Saturday, we will kick off at 9 a.m. Then we will play doubles, doubles back-to-back, have a quick bite of lunch again and then we will finish up with singles.”

The initial event of the fall will allow the Nicholls teams to get back to match-play mode, according to Harkins.

“On the men’s side, we are very fortunate. We have three All-Conference players returning,” Harkins said. Then we have a nice addition of some graduate students and some freshmen. It’s for them to get used to playing in our area, in our region, and the local teams that we play in the season.

“On the women’s side, it’s very similar. We have some seniors coming back. We have four fifth-year players, who are all in the MBA program, who came with a lot of experience. They are very excited to test the waters and to play down here, and to play against some Division I competition and some local competition.”

Showcased on the men’s side for Nicholls is Omar Morsy.

“Omar, just from a mental side, he’s really grown as a young man. He’s very mature on the court and he’s really honed his skill set. He’s a nasty lefty. He has a wicked forehand. When he’s playing against these top players day in and day out, his game has risen year after year. He’s become accustomed to playing an elite player every time he walks on the court.

“He’s our line-one singles player. He, with Quentin Lamothe, were also the line-two All-Conference team last year. They will be our line-one conference doubles team,” Harkins said.

Morsy is from Egypt and Lamothe from France.

The women’s side features a pair of players from France.

“Lea Grinberg is coming in as a fifth-year (player). She’s transferred in from her previous school (Arkansas Tech). She’s a tough French player, also followed by Carla Bouygues, who is starting her fifth year. In her first four years, she was our highest-winning player on the women’s team. She’s a French girl, too,” said Harkins.

Bouygues, said Harkins, packs a big punch into a 5-foot-2 frame.

“She’s been our leading competitor in wins. She just competes. She never stops competing. It doesn’t matter what it is or what time, she truly loves that. She likes to be the one to make the difference in the match,” the Nicholls coach said.

The Nicholls roster, on both the men’s and women’s side, has a very international flavor.

“We’ve got kids from Egypt, Slovakia, Britian, Bulgaria, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, China, Japan. It is literally world-class tennis. All these players are elite players in their countries, and they come all the way here to Thibodaux, La., to play some top-notch Division I tennis,” Harkins said.

Some naysayers may wonder about the lack of local or American players on the squads.

“I recruit the American kids year after year. Every year I recruit the top couple kids in Louisiana. We’ve had a lot of success. On the women’s and men’s side, we had two of the top players for the last few years, they both graduated and moved on to better things,” said Harkins.

There is a harsh reality, Harkins said, when it comes to recruiting on the collegiate level in tennis.

“The pool on the national level – we usually recruit about the top 200 kids in the country on the men’s and women’s side,” Harkins explained. “To be honest, the Power schools take 75 percent of those kids.

“From an international perspective, I’ve got a pool of about 5,000 kids on each side. They are dying to come to America. The level is so high, and we have such a small pool of American kids, we usually try to have one or two on each squad. We always love them, and they have a great experience. The reality of it is the pool in the market is much bigger from a European standpoint. College tennis is a European training ground, with the American kids as well.”

The tournament in Thibodaux is the first of several events the Nicholls teams will take part in during the fall.

“After that, the men will head to Lafayette for a challenging weekend. It will be good competition. It will be what we call a hidden dual type event. They will be there all weekend.

“Then we come back and then the men and the women will each go to the ITA Regionals. We will take a select group to the regionals. The top four usually on both teams and they go in separate ways. The women go to Baton Rouge this year at LSU. The men actually go to Auburn, Ala.”

Before the fall season is over, there is a chance Thibodaux will be the host site of another event, according to Harkins.

“We will do Down the Bayou II. We will either host it here, or we have a very good partnership with UNO, where they will host it on their site,” said Harkins.

The initial event of the fall, Harkins said, is an opportunity for the Nicholls teams to seek greater consistency and good decision-making against competition that will aid the Colonels as they move forward.

“We will take this as the kickoff to the fall and we will go straight through to November. We will assess after the weekend. There will be a little time for recovery. They are going to be sore. They are going to be tired. But guess what? We will turn around and get right back to it.”