SAN MARCOS, TEXAS – The Texas State women's tennis team opens its 2016 spring schedule on Saturday, Jan. 23, when the Bobcats host McNeese State at the Bobcat Tennis Complex.  The match begins at 10 a.m.
 
The Bobcats open the spring with a young team that includes one senior, a pair of juniors and five freshmen, and head coach Tory Plunkett is not sure what to expect early in the season. The Bobcats have one senior player in Katy Collins and a pair of juniors in Pippa Carr and Eva Dench. The other five freshmen players are Bianca Birkenstock, Joy Chia Ming Ming, Ana Perez, Yadira Rubio and Ammaarah Tim.
               
Collins posted a 4-3 record in singles play last fall and had an 8-3 mark in dual matches last spring. Carr had a 7-6 dual match record as the No. 3 singles player for the Bobcats last year. Dench led the Bobcats with a 5-3 record last fall in tournament play after posting six wins as Texas State's No. 4 player last spring.  Rubio also won three matches, while Ming Ming added a pair of victories and Perez won one of her two matches last fall.
 
"I am hoping that everything jells from what they learned from the fall," said Plunkett. "But everything is up in the air. I usually come into a spring with a set lineup that doesn't change much.  But, I can guarantee you that I will be changing my lineup because five of the eight players are freshmen."
 
McNeese State opened their spring season last weekend in Waco when the Cowgirls defeated Texas Rio Grande Valley by a score of 6-1 on Jan. 15 after dropping a 4-3 decision against Baylor on Jan. 14.
 
McNeese State is led by Giovanna Fioretti, who was named the Southland Conference Player of the Week after recording a pair of wins as the No. 3 singles player and teaming with Julia Kral for a victory as the No. 2 doubles team. The No. 1 singles player for McNeese State is Klaudia Gawlik, who is a two-time SLC Player of the Year and Kral was an All-SLC performer last year.
 
"I am wanting to see how we come together this spring knowing that the spring is totally different from the fall," said Plunkett. "We have tried to educate them on it and done a lot of talking about how it is playing in a team atmosphere. The biggest thing that we gained in the fall was experience because we are such a young team. The other thing we gained was that they learned how we play here at Texas State. That was probably the toughest thing to learn. We were in our last tournament still trying to learn to play the Texas State way. We are going to see if it sunk in and carried over during the Holidays."
 
Following Saturday's match, the Bobcats will travel to South Alabama and play matches against the Jaguars and Nicholls State on Feb. 5-6 before closing out the weekend at Auburn on Feb. 7.