Last weekend’s 6-1 win over Washington State bumped Oregon up to No. 39.
But Oregon picked up more than a win last week. As of last Friday, the NCAA cleared sophomore Tina Snodgrass to join the Ducks as a walk-on for the remainder of the season.
Oregon lost both its freshmen right before the beginning of the dual match season. Erika Januskova left the team for personal reasons, and Simone Templeton was released for medical reasons earlier last month.
The departures of Januskova and Templeton left the Ducks with a roster of six – the exact number needed to field the six singles positions in the lineup. This left Oregon with no room for error because an injury would mean having to forfeit a match.
So Oregon coach Paul Reber went hunting for a seventh player, and he found Snodgrass through the club tennis team.
“I came to the club practice and watched a little bit there and I thought she was the best player out there,” Reber said.
Reber approached Snodgrass, the club team coordinator, to see if she’d be interested in joining the team.
Snodgrass jumped at the opportunity even though Reber made it clear to her that she might not see too much match time.
“Right now the only chance I would play is if someone were injured,” Snodgrass said. “But it’s not as much about the match experience as it is about the experience of the team.
“And the coaching is going to be the best coaching of my life. So it was not as opportunity that I could ever pass up.”
As Reber expressed it, Snodgrass is a valuable insurance policy for the Ducks.
“In order to get into NCAAs you have to have six healthy bodies,” Reber said. “So that was our thought there: if we have an injury and we happen to make NCAAs they wouldn’t let us into the tournament. Now that we’ve got Tina, we’ve got a little bit of a reprieve in case something does happen.
“She’s just looking for a great experience, which is exactly what we’re gonna try and give her.”
Snodgrass has been an integral part of the Oregon club team for the last two years and is hoping to be able to help both the club team and the varsity team for the rest of this season.
“I can’t actually play for the club team right now, but I’m hoping to maintain relationships with those people and at the same time I’m really looking forward to improving my tennis game and being of support to the rest of the girls on this team and being as much a part of this team as I can,” Snodgrass said.
Reber said he wants to spend a lot of individual time with Snodgrass over the next few weeks to get her on par with the rest of the team.
“Compared to our six scholarship kids, she’s a level below, and we’ve talked about that,” Reber said. “But we’re going to spend a lot of individual time with her at the beginning and hopefully have her coming out for some team practices as the year goes on.”
The Oregon women host No. 48 Boise State at the Student Tennis Center tomorrow while the men head to Boise, Idaho for the weekend to take on the Utah Utes and the University of Pennsylvania.