A youthful Georgia Southern women's tennis picked up valuable experience during the Spring 2025 campaign, but still put together some big highlights as we visit with head coach Sean McCaffrey for his end of the season look back at what the Eagles were able to accomplish.
Finishing the season with an 11-10 overall record - the eighth straight season the Eagles have put together a winning record - came with some very impressive performances, including playing five matches against teams that advanced to the NCAA Championsihps and five matches against teams that were nationally ranked.
Georgia Southern also achieved a No. 65 ITA national team ranking in February, the highest national ranking that the Eagles have ever achieved from the organization.
And this was all done with a team that featured five true freshmen, one sophomore and two juniors.
We sat down with Coach McCaffrey to ask him about the season that recently concluded and what lies ahead for the Eagles heading into 2025-26.
The Eagles were one of four Sunbelt teams to earn an ITA national team ranking, coming in with a program best No. 65 mark in February. What does that mean to you as a coach and to a young team that entered the season with no seniors?
"I think overall it was exciting to be able to have something like that as a benchmark, to kind of show the level of ability that we have. Not even that we have just so much potential, but we have the ability to be among the best teams in the nation. We started out really hot, firing on all cylinders and I think we felt really confident going into the season. Through our first 10 matches, I think we played extremely well. Throughout the season, the team has been very cohesive, which I think is really good. I can't say that we were ever keeping our eye on the national rankings. Our focus after that point was getting into the conference season and trying to have successful matches. The goal was not necessarily focused on the wins and losses, and as a coach who is generally very competitive, that was really difficult for us. But the way that we were going to develop this team, it was going to be definitely process driven and not so much results driven. And I think even though we didn't finish in the top 75 this year, we really weren't too far off even of that. But I still felt like if you were to look at things, I still felt like we accomplished quite a bit this season."
What were some of your favorite moments of the 2025 season and were there any pleasant surprises among your team and student athletes that you saw this year?
"I think probably one of the better moments was finally getting outside after having to play a number of matches indoors because of the weather, it may have been four [road] matches in a row. We had to play indoor because of rain and knowing that we're definitely more of an outdoor team - we did not really get a whole lot of repetition playing inside, where a lot of the other teams did. Once we got back outside, I think our first match was Troy and we went there to play a makeup match. Troy ultimately made it to the conference tournament semifinals and we played them with a whole lot of excitement and energy and it showed in a 4-1 win, especially at their place, which is really difficult to win at. So I think being that that was one of our last matches, the women can kind of take that as definitely a positive. I think they put a lot of things together then, and they showed themselves that we are a good team. Other positives? I don't know if I anticipated the freshmen to have done as well of a job as they did or any of the new girls, whether it's Franzi or Juliette or Lisen. I think they all really contributed a whole lot. I'm also pleasantly surprised at the job that Mackenzie did as a captain, especially as a sophomore, which is not easy. I think she really did a good job of leading the locker room in every single match. We were always competitive, it didn't matter who we were up against. And I think she had a whole lot to do with that. And then, I think we can also say that you look at Amalie who probably had our best singles record on the team. Whenever she was called on to play, she did a phenomenal job. I think she went maybe 11 and 5 overall in singles. But for being such a young team, there's a lot of things that I was really pleased with. There's obviously still a lot more work that we have to do, but I think we're definitely on the right track."
Every team faces adversity during the season and the Eagles are no different. Tell us what you learned about your team and your student athletes during this year.
"We've always been known to be a resilient and relentless program in what we do that may not have necessarily showed in our statistics or with our record or with the final score of some of our matches. But the biggest adversity, I would say, were definitely the injuries that we had. Nothing really that was season ending, but definitely a lot of nagging things that we'll get on top of. And that definitely hurt - when you have someone who's possibly injured at the one or two position, that is significantly different than someone who might be injured, who might be the number six player. At that point, you're moving an entire team up and that's never an easy thing. And that's where pretty much at the top three spots, we had to deal with that almost every match, where we were missing one of our top three, if not two of our top three players. So that was difficult, but what it did is it gave the other ladies on the team a chance to step up. And the one thing I can say is that there was not a single match all season where the women did not stop fighting. Even after we had our string of having to play matches indoors and dealing with the rain as much, the women didn't complain. They went out and they fought and they fought really, really hard where a lot of those matches were really close when one looks at them, but we just didn't come out with the result. We also had some very successful wins in other ways, whether it was on a given day, we look at some of the people who stepped up. Lisen against Arkansas State, who beat one of their players who may have been first or second team on conference and beat her fairly easily at number one. I think Evie had a really good win against Troy in one of the last matches. Juliette stepped up, she had a great win against James Madison. Franzi stepped up and she beat an all-conference girl from Marshall. And also I felt like our doubles teams were fantastic. It's just the way things work. It's unfortunate sort of, but I can safely say that we definitely improved a lot as a team. As much as it hurts to maybe not make the conference tournament, I feel like we are definitely on the right trajectory."
Next year could be radically different from a Sun Belt Conference perspective. Walk us through what the changes are going to mean, not only for the Eagles but for the league as a whole going into 2025-26.
"This was a very, very competitive season where we had, heck, the six and seven seeds were playing for a possibility of getting into the final and ultimately it was the one against the six seed in that final. I feel that there's a lot of parity in the conference and as much as we may have been on the outside looking in, I feel that there was - when the women look back on things - there's not a single team in the conference that scares us or that they look at and say, oh, there's no chance. Every single team that we played, every single team that we know of in the conference, we know that we can compete with. And then next year, by not having a full conference schedule, we will play a few of our conference teams. But really a lot of what we're going to have to do is make sure that we are doing the right things so that we have a good national ranking. We're going to have to make sure that we build our schedule like we have in the past. That gives us an opportunity to get ranked in the ITA because ultimately at the end of the year, your final national ranking is going to decide on what the seedings are going to be for the conference tournament. But either way, next year we know that all the teams are going to be in the conference tournament, which is different. I know that with our team, it doesn't matter what position we're in, we're going to fight. And I feel really good, especially knowing that next year for us, one of the things that we're going to take a little bit more account of is the winning and the losing. That's just going to be part of our maturation process and the girls are ready for that. I know they are. As a matter of fact, so quickly after our season ended, I already noticed the women outside practicing as soon as they had their first opportunity, and it's something I didn't ask them to do. The mark of someone who's a champion or a really hard worker we all know is that it's what they do when no one's looking. And these women are all ambitious and I'm very proud of the fact that they're already beginning that process for 2025-26."
