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Wow - SMU announced the 2013 class today and it is ranked No. 13 in the country. It looks like Coach Gyulai has the program headed in the right direction quickly!

http://www.smumustangs.com/sports/w-tennis/spec-rel/060413aaa.html

June 4, 2013

DALLAS (SMU) --- The SMU Women's Tennis recruiting class is ranked No. 13 nationally according to TennisRecruting.net; the highest ranking in program history. The highly-touted 2013 signees for second-year Head Coach Kati Gyulai include Anna Anderson, Macie Elliott, Daria Sharapova, Rosalie Willig and Mary Wright.

The signing class includes five highly-ranked student-athletes. Sharapova is ranked No. 238 by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) while winning one ITA and finishing second in another. Willig is ranked the No. 66 player in Germany. Anderson is ranked No. 67 nationally out of South Carolina, Elliott is ranked as the top player in Indiana and Wright is the top-ranked player from Arkansas.

Yes, she is Maria's cousin...

Maybe Maria will drop in for a few matches!!!

will be interesting to see the impact they make compared to Marta and Sasha. if they can produce those results, they will live up to the ranking.

Nice...now hurry up with that tennis facility already!

Good recruiting class but the days of Top 25 teams are long gone until we can get that facility built. Unfortunately Gyulai is no Longbotham (already has Auburn to top 25). Another Orsini mistake.

Agree-getting rid of Big O was a blessing, but not letting his hatchet-person go was sad to see. Having no courts while Turpin Courts were being built after the basketball practice facility took the Hager Courts was one thing. Turning right around and taking a couple of years to replace Turpin Courts while the raw land just sat there is ridiculous. Leaders can do more than one thing at a time.

PonyLurker wrote:Good recruiting class but the days of Top 25 teams are long gone until we can get that facility built. Unfortunately Gyulai is no Longbotham (already has Auburn to top 25). Another Orsini mistake.

She's doing something right, Mr. Longbotham. She got the highest-ranked class in school history.

centexstang wrote:Agree-getting rid of Big O was a blessing, but not letting his hatchet-person go was sad to see. Having no courts while Turpin Courts were being built after the basketball practice facility took the Hager Courts was one thing. Turning right around and taking a couple of years to replace Turpin Courts while the raw land just sat there is ridiculous. Leaders can do more than one thing at a time.

His "hatchet-person"? Mike Vaught? He quit the minute Orsini was canned.

Hal wrote:She's doing something right, Mr. Longbotham. She got the highest-ranked class in school history.

Very funny Mr. Gyulai. She got a good recruiting class, lets see if she can do anything with it. She inherited a lot of talent & didn't do much with it.

Publicizing objective rankings is what bad teams do. See Doh's "Top 25 Class" that one year and we know how that turned out.

Coach LLM never publicized her recruiting while here and look at the talent she brought in. Coach G took over the same group (sans Lesniak, a big loss) and got worse with them over time.

I agree with Pony Lurker, LLM already has Auburn Top 25 and setting records. Let's wait and see what Coach G does with this talent before we get ahead of ourselves. IMHO nothing will happen good with this program until they get a real facility. Kids won't want to play at a school without a facility.

I'm dubious this program will see the heights LLM took it for a while.

Mike was tough, but he would at least stab you in the chest and you knew where he stood, I was referring to someone stabbing coaches in the back. DOH can be judged, LLM can be judged, June can be judged, Carl can be judged--Gyulai gets a couple more years before judgement.

ER9TC4 wrote:Publicizing objective rankings is what bad teams do. See Doh's "Top 25 Class" that one year and we know how that turned out.

By the way, the recruiting ranking in which we were supposedly #13 in the country, Houston is #9. Cougar High hasn't made the NCAA tournament or won against us since the 90s. I don't want to pile on Coach Goolay here because I'm sure she's a fine coach and will eventually have some success. I'm just disappointed that Orsini pushed both Longbotham-Meisner and Schellas Hyndman out when we couldn't possibly hire anyone better and both would have stayed.

PonyLurker wrote:I'm just disappointed that Orsini pushed both Longbotham-Meisner and Schellas Hyndman out when we couldn't possibly hire anyone better and both would have stayed.

I don't know the details on LLM, but as for Schellas, yeah.

Good discussion from all. We will know in a couple years. I do know my interest is the highest it has been since the days of Marta.

Hopefully the new tennis facility will be all it's cracked up to be.

DanFreibergerForHeisman wrote:

PonyLurker wrote:I'm just disappointed that Orsini pushed both Longbotham-Meisner and Schellas Hyndman out when we couldn't possibly hire anyone better and both would have stayed.

I don't know the details on LLM, but as for Schellas, yeah.

Good discussion from all. We will know in a couple years. I do know my interest is the highest it has been since the days of Marta.

Hopefully the new tennis facility will be all it's cracked up to be.

When it finally gets here.

What's the hold up now?