Dan Fleser
The pushcarts exiting Dogwood Hall Tuesday morning were brimming with pillows and other gear. Students were finished with classes at the University of Tennessee and bound for summer.
Across the parking lot, at the Goodfriend Tennis Center, spring was still in session for the Tennessee Lady Vols. They have reached the Elite Eight round of the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2010 after upsetting undefeated No. 1 Oklahoma State on its home courts last Saturday. They had practice and weights in preparation for Friday’s match against UCLA. Finally, there was a visit from men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes, who encouraged them to make this Honeysuckle-sweet moment in program history last even longer.
“I think we’ve been able to process the fact that we’re a really good team,” senior Lauren Anzalotta said. “I think we knew that the whole season. It just gave us extra confirmation that we can win a national championship.”
The tennis Lady Vols have contributed their share to what has been quite a semester for Tennessee sports. The blooms are everywhere:
-Lady Vols softball achieved a program first with a second consecutive SEC regular season championship. The achievement was magnified by all 13 conference schools that field teams qualifying for the NCAA tournament. The Lady Vols will host a regional this weekend.
-Vols baseball earned a No. 1 national ranking and reached 40 victories for a fifth consecutive full season all in the same week. A winning streak against perennial conference power Vanderbilt that spanned three seasons reached nine games before the Vols lost the series finale last Sunday in Nashville.
-Men’s tennis also is in the Elite Eight and is ranked seventh nationally. The Vols beat No. 10 Florida State 4-3 last Saturday with Angel Diaz winning a third-set tiebreaker in the decisive match.
-Lady Vols rowing rose 10 spots to No. 5 nationally after winning 14 races over a two-day span last month at the Big Ten Invitational. There was at least one top 13 boat in each race Tennessee won and two in nine of those races. UT’s average margin of victory was 9.031 seconds. Even Admiral Perry would’ve been impressed by such dominance.
-The Lady Vols 4x100 relay of Jacious Sears, Dennisha Page, DaJour Miles and Joella Lloyd won the program’s first SEC title in the event since 1984 and improved their collegiate-leading time to 42.42 seconds at the conference meet last weekend. The 4x400 relay of Javonya Valcourt, Kyla Robinson-Hubbard, Miles and Brianna White capped the meet by winning the program’s first title since 1987 with a school and collegiate record time of 3:24.44.
Lady Vols tennis coach Alison Ojeda, a former UT player who won 102 singles matches, thinks the shared success is anything but coincidental. She’s been the coach here since 2016 and believes the current environment is more open and intentional in talking about winning. The discourse has served the same purpose as nourishment.
Ojeda mentioned former women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt in saying, “Pat used to talk all the time about surrounding yourself with excellence and that’s what we’re seeing.”
Tennis player Esther Adeshina, who beat previously unbeaten Kristina Novak last Saturday, received messages from UT swimmers and men’s tennis players, among others, after the match.
“I think that seeing the other teams do well really spurs us on to do well,” she said. “We push each other to strive for greatness.”
The student-athletes are part of the same conversation that Ojeda referenced. With such forums as VOLeaders Academy, there is a constructive framework for experiences to be shared and questions to be addressed among peers.
“Let’s say we have a really tough practice,” Ojeda said, “and then two of our players go to Vol Leader class and softball comes in and football comes in and they start having a conversation. They’re now surrounded with athletes who say, ‘Yeah, I remember a practice like that. Here’s what we did.’ Next thing you know, instead of that player possibly complaining or being frustrated, they’re like ‘Oh yeah, we can do that.’ ”
In that setting, the exchange happens organically. Judging by this spring and all the fields that are flourishing, the tradeoff is getting results.
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Dan Fleser is a 1980 graduate of the University of Missouri, who has covered University of Tennessee athletics since 1988. He is a member of the Tennessee Sportswriters and the U.S. Basketball Writers Halls of Fame. He can be reached at danfleser3@gmail.com.