The Mean Green women’s tennis team came from behind to win its first Sun Belt Conference Championship this April and advanced to the NCAA tournament for the first time in program history. The team, one of four UNT teams to see postseason play this year, also was nationally ranked by the International Tennis Association this season, another program first. The Mean Green climbed as high as No. 60 and entered the NCAA tournament as the 64th best team in the nation, losing to No. 32 Tulsa.
Mean Green head coach Sujay Lama was named the 2010 Sun Belt Conference Women’s Tennis Coach of the Year, and junior Madura Ranganathan was named an All-Sun Belt Conference tennis athlete for the 2010 spring season, the first UNT player selected for the conference. She won 10 matches during the 2010 regular season.
“Four things led to our success,” Lama says. “We believed in each other, we saw pressure as a privilege, we used adversity to make us better and, most importantly, we became one family with one mission — to bring home the Sun Belt Championship to UNT and qualify for our first NCAA tournament.”
In the conference championship against No. 49 Florida International, the Mean Green rallied from an 0-3 deficit to win 4-3.
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