NDNU tennis building foundation

Notre Dame de Namur University women's tennis coach Jason Levine is realistic. With no scholarships to offer, the first-year NDNU coach knows he probably won't be able to field a championship squad in the tough Pacific-West Conference. However, Levine and his players find satisfaction in other areas besides winning, and ultimately that's what a lot of small college sports are all about. But make no mistake: The Argonauts (1-7) are competitors just like anyone else, and Friday they earned their first win of the season, 8-1 at La Sierra, a Division III school in Riverside. For NDNU, Friday's victory represents just a small part of its journey. "(When the girls realized they had won) there wasn't a big, over-the-top celebration," Levine said. "It was pretty low key, which was cool because they felt they should've won the match and did. It was nice to see our players get rewarded. They're competitors and they work hard. Our short-term goal is to get better individually and continue to learn how to compete against players who definitely have more skill. At practice and in matches, we're trying for little breakthroughs." Levine played tennis and soccer at NDNU in the mid-1990s, back when the college was called the College of Notre Dame. Back then, the university had both a men's and women's tennis program before both were dropped approximately 10 years ago. But the women's program was brought back four years ago and Levine was contacted to see if he had any interest in coaching the team this season. Unlike NDNU's basketball, soccer and volleyball teams, the tennis team doesn't play all of the schools in the Pac-West for two reasons -- the sport is set up differently and not competitively balanced. It wouldn't make much sense for NDNU to travel to Hawaii to play the four Division II powers there, so the Argonauts usually end up playing Division III schools in the same boat they're in -- with no scholarships to offer. As Levine builds up the program, the goal is to someday become strong enough so a trip to Hawaii would make sense from a competitive standpoint. Until then, NDNU will continue to play conference opponents like Dominican and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, as well as some Division III programs. Levine knew once he took over that recruiting would have to be at the forefront of his agenda. "There hasn't been a lot of emphasis on recruiting (with the program)," Levine said. "The emphasis has been more on fielding a team each year. But in the last two years, we've been able to get a few players who can play tennis pretty well." Levine said his top three players -- Rebecca Corteza, Kaylee Nichols and Morganna Thompson-Hayes -- all are legitimate talents who have solid tennis backgrounds. Corteza is from Texas, Nichols is from San Diego and Thompson-Hayes is from Hawaii. A lot of times, recruiting players to NDNU comes from either having a connection with the player's previous school/coach or a player's profile being sent out to schools through recruiting services. "You want your players to know in the back of their minds that I'm doing my best to find quality players to help support them next season," Levine said. "We're starting to build something here and I think next year if we can two to three more solid players, we're probably going to be .500 (even won-loss record)." With Corteza only being a sophomore and Thompson-Hayes a freshman, NDNU's future does have a promising feel to it. Levine knows it's not going to be easy building up a competitive program -- the top Division II schools offer at least a couple to multiple scholarships -- but he's confident that improvement is just on the horizon. "It's difficult to compete against schools (with greater resources)," Levine said. "But we want to make those matches more competitive, and there's a lot of positive that can come out of that." Tuesday, NDNU embarked on its only lengthy road trip of the season to Southern California. The Argonauts lost to Cal Lutheran on Wednesday and went down in defeat a day later to Cal Tech, a match they felt they should've won. So the competitive juices are definitely there, and it spurred the players to victory on Friday. "You try to keep things positive but losing to Cal Tech was tough because we didn't play our best tennis," Levine said. "That was a rough night. After beating La Sierra, you could see the demeanor (on the players' faces) change. They were more upbeat and it was good to see." NDNU plays Whittier today before heading back home. Since the season started in early February, Levine has tried to get his players to become more emotional. The players have finally come up with a rallying cry. During a match Nichols will shout out, "I'm an Argo" and the rest of the team follows with "Naut." Hey, it's cheesy but effective. "They're a quiet team and I'm trying to get them to pep each other up a bit at times," Levine said. Lately, there's been a bit more pep in NDNU's step.