A
ARTS AND FEATURES
Tennis player anticipates 2014 season
Amryn Soldier
Tina Scruggs
cscwggI&unca.edu - Multimedia and
Layout Editor
Amryn Soldier works hard to bal
ance school, her social life and ath
letics going into a busy spring tennis
season.
According
to Soldier, a
UNC Ashe
ville junior,
the girls’ team
has nine peo
ple this year,
which is ac
tually some
what large.
There needs
to be at least
six girls to be
a team. Sol
dier considers
the large size
of the team a good thing, because it
means people are interested in playing
for UNCA.
“We have some awesome new fresh
man that are really hard working and
I think they have a lot of good talent.
It’s going to be good. It s nice having
new blood on the team,’’ Soldier said.
The team feels bigger and stronger
to Soldier, who said the new energy
is great. Within the past year, only
one new freshman joined the team.
Though they did well last year. Soldier
said she thinks the team functions bet
ter together now.
“We’re all just dealing with being a
team really well, which is refreshing.
Soldier said. “I’ve had both sides, so
I know what it’s like to have a not so
great team dynamic and then to have a
really good one and you appreciate it
a lot more.”
This semester the team won many
of their flights, which are a series of
matches, according to Soldier.
“We all did really well, we won our
flights, or won our backdrop flights,
and then me and my doubles partner
won our doubles flight, so yeah we re
doing really well,” she said.
The tournaments were away with
six or seven different schools, accord
ing to Soldier. Soldier said Wafford
was the best for her.
“It was just like a match where fi
nally all the stuff that I’d been work
ing on kind of clicked and I was like,
‘light bulb,’ and then during the match
I figured it out and I finally won. It s
Photo by Jorja Smith - Photography Editor
Amryn Soldier, junior, hits the ball while her doubles partner, Gillian
Lewis, waits for the outcome during last season’s match against
use Upstate.
a match that maybe a couple months
ago I might have lost,” said the Geor
gia native.
According to Soldier, at the college
level there is less focus on strokes
and more emphasis placed on learn
ing how to use your skill set to win
matches.
“There’s a lot of like maturity in ten
nis - it’s a very mental game. After a
certain point you kind of know how to
hit your strokes, it’s like muscle mem
ory, but it’s so mental because it’s such
an individual sport, but at the same
time in college it’s a team sport so it’s
kind of confusing,” Soldier said.
Soldier said she thinks being an ath
lete in college shaped her social expe
rience.
“I saw playing tennis as something
to enhance my college experience,”
Soldier said. “I think for me it was
more, of a college thing, but I’d like
to keep playing recreationally after
wards.”
Soldier, a photography student, said
she one day hopes to have her own
portrait studio, though recently she
has gotten into ceramics.
“I’ve been doing both of them for so
long it’s kind of hard to choose. And
sometimes you do have to choose and
I hate making decisions like that be
cause it’s like you’re sacrificing one
over the other,” Soldier said.
Soldier said she has thoroughly en
joyed her time at UNCA and the com
munity it provides to her, though she
wishes there were more faculty to
share their wisdom.
“I think the professors here are real
ly awesome. I just wish that there were
more classes more specific to what I
want to do. I think that there should be
more faculty. I’d like to learn from a
lot of different people, and the school
is so small I haven’t really gotten to do
that,” Soldier said.
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