May 19, 2015
By Jon Cooper
The Good Word
Every coach is well acquainted with the expression “When life gives you lemons make lemonade.” It’s an optimist’s way of saying “handling adversity,” and is a big part of their job.
Based on his expertise during the 2015 season, Georgia Tech women’s tennis head coach Rodney Harmon may have a future in the beverage business.
Faced with the prospect of playing without half of his Indoor National Championship doubles team, due to the injury to junior Megan Kurey, Harmon paired the other half of that team, junior Kendal Woodard, with freshman Paige Hourigan.
The result was a fresh, tasty No. 1 doubles team that left other teams with a sour taste.
The team of Woodard and Hourigan has moved up to No. 21 in the country and will get a chance to show just how good it is when it heads to Waco, Texas, to play in the 2015 NCAA Women’s Tennis Championships at the Hurd Tennis Center on the campus of Baylor University. The 11th Yellow Jackets doubles team ever to get to NCAAs, Woodard and Hourigan open up on Thursday against California’s Klara Fablicova and Zsofi Susanyi, the fifth-ranked team in the country (the time is still TBD).
“Megan was out the whole fall, injured, and was injured during the spring as well, so we just didn’t have her so that precipitated us having to make a change,” Harmon explained. “Paige is naturally an ad-court player but I felt like she could play in the deuce court as well. Kendal is very good from the ad, so we just tried it and it seemed to work. Their personalities worked well together and their games meshed well together. They’ve played extremely well.”
“I think the biggest thing is Kendal is a little bit more laid back and Paige is a bit more fiery…a LOT more fiery,” Harmon added, with a laugh. “I think that combination works because one calms the other one down and one fires the other one up. So I find that that works well.”
Hourigan has proved to be the perfect complement to Woodard, although she stands pretty well on her own.
The freshman from Turakina, New Zealand, played primarily at No. 2 (she also split four matches at No. 1) and has worked her way up to No. 48 in the nation. She put up an 18-8 record (one unfinished), had only one two-match losing streak all spring, and won 10 of her last 13 matches — she had to retire from her last match in the Finals of the ACC Championship, due to an ankle injury. Hourigan will become the 21st Jacket to play in NCAA Singles and the first since Jillian O’Neill in 2012, when she takes on Stanford’s Carol Zhao, the No. 2 player in the country, on Wednesday morning (the match begins at 11:30 a.m. EST).
Hourigan has been as good on the doubles side, as prior to teaming with Woodard, she and sophomore Rasheeda McAdoo recorded a not-too-shabby 7-3 doubles record.
Despite apparent differences, the fiery Hourigan and the ultra-cool Woodard hit it off almost immediately.
“I’m a good returner and she’s good at the net so when I return it’s really hard to get it past her because she’s got such a wide [wing] span,” said Hourigan.
“She has a really big serve. I have never played with somebody that has such a big serve and great volley,” she added. “It was different but we jelled really well. We laughed and had fun on the court. I think it’s because we’re good friends that we could get along really well on the court as well. I didn’t think it was going to work but it did.”
For Woodard, it was simply a matter of finding the right fit.
After teaming with freshman Johnnise Renaud for two matches during the fall, she kicked off the spring at the Mal Moore Invitational in Tuscaloosa, Ala., by reuniting with Kurey against Northwestern (they had to retire down 0-4), then teamed with freshman Alexis Prokopuik to beat Florida State, 7-6 (5-0), then concluded the event by teaming with Hourigan in a 6-2 loss to Alabama’s #18 Erin Routliffe and Maya Jansen.
The loss to Routliffe and Jansen would be the exception, as the duo won seven of its next 10 matches (two others were unfinished). Then, after a 5-8 loss at No. 17 Duke on March 29, Woodard and Hourigan reeled off another 10-match unbeaten streak (9-0, one unfinished), ending with a loss in the ACC Tournament Championship match against Virginia.
Woodard found that playing with Hourigan similar to playing with Kurey.
“[Paige is] kind of like Megan, great from the back, so she’s able to set me up when I’m at the net,” she said. “And she serves pretty good, which is another way to set me up. She likes to move a lot and we’re friends.”
They’re also a juggernaut that want to call themselves champions — a goal that ended in the first round for Kurey and Woodard in last year’s outdoor doubles.
Waco will mark the first match together for Woodard and Hourigan since Hourigan injured her ankle. But she’s healthy and rarin’ to go both in singles and doubles.
“I hope I can play both singles and doubles but I’ll be happy to play just doubles for sure,” she said. “It’s getting better each day.”
Woodard feels the same can be said about their team.
“I think we get better because now we move a lot more at the net,” she said. “We cover each other at the baseline when one of us poaches so that’s definitely improved since we started playing. We’re pretty excited to go to Waco next week.”
Keeping Hourigan from getting too excited will be an understood role for Woodard.
“When she gets upset I try to tell her `It’s going to be okay, just try and get this next point,'” Woodard said. “When she gets fired up I get fired up with her. I kind of have a little more experience so once we get out there I’ll be able to help her get used to everything. So we just have to get out there and get ready to go.”
“I do get a little bit mad when I’m on the court,” Hourigan said. “It helps me sometimes and then sometimes it’s not so good. [Kendal] has a lot of experience and I look up to her a lot so when she’s on the court with me I feel a lot at ease because I know that she’s done it before. It’s good having her there with good experience.”
Harmon expects his team to be at ease and in no mood to back down against Fablicova and Susanyi or any other high-ranking teams they might see.
“We’ve played against the team that won it last year from Alabama, we played the No. 3 team in the country from Clemson. They beat those guys,” he said. “We’ve played against Virginia, we’ve played against a lot of the top teams in the country. They just have to go out and do things that they do well. If they do that they have a chance of being successful.
“I’m really happy for them,” he added. “They had to go through all that you have to go through in a long season and played such a tough schedule. They’ve played so many big matches so it’s good to see them rewarded for being consistent and winning a lot of matches against a number of top players. Getting to go to the NCAAs is always a great thing.”
