Gatorade baths don’t usually take place in tennis.

But when women’s tennis coach Elizabeth Anderson won her 100th match as a coach when the Elon University team took down Wofford College 7-0 at the Jimmy Powell Tennis Center April 1, her players decided to change that.

“We had all planned this after our match,” said senior Kaylyn Smialek. “We dumped a whole water thing on her, and she had no clue what we were doing, and we had just planned it because we knew it was her 100th win.”

Anderson is in her eighth season as the team’s head coach and has helped the team to a 15-7 record with a April 10 match at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the Southern Conference tournament to play. She looked at the 100th win as an avenue to reminisce about the past.

“It just brings back so many great memories of all the players that have played here and the relationships that we’ve had with them and everything they’ve done for the university as a whole,” she said. “It just means a lot to me to have the honor to work with so many great players.”

A student-athlete in her own right

Anderson is from North Carolina and played collegiate tennis at North Carolina State University for one year before transferring to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where she graduated in 2001. During her freshman year at NC State, she discovered her passion for coaching.

“I always loved the team atmosphere and I had a great experience as a player,” she said. “I remember being a freshman and thinking that I would like to do something like this because I really looked up to my coach a lot.”

She said she also concentrated on her studies in case things did not work out as a coach, a focus on academics that she carries over to the team today. Anderson has coached 19 Academic All-Southern Conference selections, and Elon has been named an ITA All-Academic Team every year beginning in 2005-2006.

“In recruiting, we try to find the players that are going to fit in well at this school as well as the tennis, so you have to have some of both,” she said. “Fortunately with tennis, you run across a lot of good players that are really smart too. That helps us a lot, especially with women’s tennis. Academics are important, it’s a priority, so we have to make sure that’s taken care of. We have a lot of students that are so motivated in that area.”

Junior Briana Berne credits her coach for “keeping tabs” with her on academics.

“She’s always takes the extra time, checking up on me, coordinating with or talking with Jenny (Womack), our academic advisor, to make sure everything’s OK,” Berne said. “She’ll ask me, ‘Bri, how did that test go?’ or ‘How are your grades going this semester?’ She never forgets to check in before things get out of control.”

After graduating from UNCW, Anderson spent three years as an assistant coach, one year each at the University of Idaho, the University of North Carolina (as a volunteer) and Auburn University. At Idaho, she was just one year or less older than the players she helped coach, something she said helped her greatly.

“It was really beneficial for me,” she said. “I went straight from being a player to being an assistant, which was a good thing because I think I learned a lot really quickly, but also had to mature really quickly, because a lot of the players were the same age as me. Looking back on it, I think it helped me a lot because I was able to get something. I knew what I wanted to do, I was real focused into it, so it kind of sped up the learning curve a little bit.”

Joining the maroon and gold

Anderson came to Elon as the head coach in 2004. She had heard about Elon from her predecessor, Tom Parham, who had taught a tennis class to Anderson’s mother at Atlantic Christian College, which is now Barton College.

“I had always heard great things about Elon from him and through her,” she said. “So when the job came open, I was interested and I talked to the administration. I just loved the school.”

Players said Anderson creates a family-like atmosphere on the team. Smialek cites her as a motherly figure.

“She’s like the mother that isn’t really our mother, which is good because a lot of us are from such (different places),” she said, laughing. “I’m from London and everyone else is from such far away countries that we don’t really have that figure here and having someone like that who is our coach and always taking care of us is always a really good feeling.”

Berne said Anderson sees herself as the “older sister” of the team.

[quote]It just brings back so many great memories of all the players that have played here and the relationships that we’ve had with them and everything they’ve done for the university as a whole. It just means a lot to me to have the honor to work with so many great players. - Elizabeth Anderson, Elon women's tennis coach[/quote]

“She loves us,” she said. “She always says we’re like her little sisters. When we’re traveling, when we’re here, she always puts us first in her mind. She goes above and beyond to make sure that we’re taken care of.”

Both Berne and Smialek cite Anderson’s sweetness as one of her best qualities. This sometimes leads to awkward situations on the team, especially when the players get a little mischevious.

“We played a prank on her last year,” Berne said. “(Sophomore) Frida (Jansaker) got really upset and threw a racket and broke it. Coach was freaking out, like, ‘Frida, what’s going on? Why are you acting like this before a match? Please stop!’ Then we realized it was a joke and she laughed. Every day is fun, every day is good.”

Another person involved in both Anderson’s life and in the tennis team is her husband Nathan whom she married in 2007.

“Coaching takes up a lot of your time and there’s a lot of things on the weekend,” she said. “He enjoys the girls. We’ve had them over to our house for Christmas dinner, things like that. He really likes them a lot, and will come out and watch them. He gets all into it, takes pictures. He just enjoys it from a fan perspective. It helps me a lot to have someone that’s so supportive because it makes a big difference for him to be understanding about the time commitment.”

Nathan was the person that told the girls about the 100th win.

“Coach is very modest, she doesn’t talk about those kind of things,” Smialek said. “So we were like, ‘We gotta do something.’ And we really got her, so it was awesome. It was a good day.”

Not stopping at a hundred

The team is preparing for a run at a conference title, something Elon has never done. But for Anderson, the wins are not the reason she has coached 100 wins. It is the relationships.

“I want them to feel comfortable talking to me, whether it’s about tennis or their life or their academics,” she said. “The relationships mean a lot to me, because that’s one of the things that you look back on after being a college athlete is what types of relationships (you had), how people treated you. So that’s what I want for those to be, positive experiences.”

Smialek said Anderson is succeeding.

“She’s all around just a very understanding person and really cares about us just in general,” she said. “I think she thinks about tennis and us girls every day and that’s a lot of what she does, so it’s awesome that she’s so caring and there for us.”