The Eastern men’s and women’s tennis squads will travel to Tennessee this weekend to play matches against Ohio Valley Conference rivals Tennessee Tech and Tennessee State.

The Panthers travel to Nashville, Tenn. at 11 a.m. Saturday to face Tennessee State and will take on Tennessee Tech at 10 a.m. Sunday in Cookeville, Tenn.

The men’s team is coming off a 4-3 loss to Indiana State on Wednesday, while the women haven’t played since their 5-2 loss last weekend against UT Martin.

The men’s squad is currently 9-9, including a conference record of 2-3. The women’s team is currently 6-10 on the season with an identical 2-3 record in the OVC.

For the squads to be successful on the road this weekend, head coach John Blackburn believes that mental toughness will be key.

“We need to do a little better job of being mentally tough,” he said. “During this time of the year the mental aspect of the game is probably more important than the physical aspect. Everybody has got their strokes down by this point, so we are just looking for them to put it together mentally as well.”

Blackburn said the men’s and women’s doubles teams will play a pivotal role in this weekend’s matches.

“We have been on a little bit of a roll lately on the men’s side of doubles competitions,” he said. “The girls have done a pretty good job in doubles competitions lately, I think they went 1-1 last weekend in doubles, so overall we have done pretty well.”

The men’s doubles competitions have been led by the combination of seniors in Jordan Nestrud and Vuk Milicevic.

The duo is 12-1 in doubles competitions and are 4-1 in conference play.

Milicevic said for the men’s squad to be victorious this weekend they will need to maintain their composure.

“It’s going to come down to who is more composed and who is more mentally focused,” Milicevic said. “We have three matches left in conference and there isn’t a single person on this team that doesn’t believe we can win all three. We are going to need a team effort to pick up the wins.”

Junior Jeff Rutherford agreed with Milicevic that composure and focus will be important to the squads performance this weekend.

“We will be playing in the heat this weekend, so we are going to need to play with a high intensity,” Rutherford said. “Remaining mentally tough will be a factor that everyone will need to pay attention to.”

Neil Schneider can be reached at 581-7944 or jnschneider@eiu.edu.