First-year head tennis coach Charles Merzbacher will lead his anxious netters into NIU’s first AMCU championship competition starting today.

Although the Huskies had a successful season under the direction of Merzbacher, they will not be satisfied unless they dethrone five-time champ Southwest Missouri State.

“We had a good year. We learned a lot and gained a lot of experience, but we feel that it (the season) is the conference title or nothing,” Merzbacher said.

The Huskies compiled a 16-11 overall and 7-1 conference record and is coming off a seven dual-meet win streak, which earned NIU the No. 2 seed behind SWMS. “I think we’re playing very good tennis right now. We had some good wins, but conference is going to be very tough and we’re going to need that killer instinct to be able to win,” Merzbacher said.

“We’re going to have to be mentally tough and not let up at any time. There can’t be any messing around; it’s going to be a long weekend and we can’t afford to have a mental lapse at any time.”

This will be NIU’s first conference meet after it dropped out of the Mid-American Conference in 1986 and there will be a new format awaiting the Huskies in their return to conference tournament play.

Mats Persson, No. 1 player, will be contending for the AMCU singles honor, but he will have to overcome Chris Gillis of SWMS who whipped Persson 6-1, 6-1 in their first meeting. “I think if I play well I can win. When I played him the first time I probably played my worst match of the year.”