This year the Ashland tennis team will need to prepare for more than just a new season with a new roster, they will have adjust to a new coach and new facilities.

At the conclusion of the spring semester, head tennis coach Carl Leedy announced his retirement.

Ashland went through a handful of candidates and came up with Lexi Bolesky, an Ohio native who recently graduated from Coastal Carolina, a Division I College in South Carolina, where she was most recently employed as the assistant coach.

The year after she graduated, she was a volunteer assistant coach in the fall of 2012 in Coastal Carolina. Later in the spring of 2014 she became the assistant coach and in May she discovered an opening for a head coaching position at AU.

In addition to Bolesky coming back home and being the coach for the tennis team, Ashland’s tennis program is renovating their tennis complex.

Crews are resurfacing the existing courts and adding a sixth court to the additional five.

Bleachers and a cement walkway are also being added along with new fencing around the existing courts.

Ashland University’s athletic director, Al King, thinks all the renovations should be completed by early September when the tennis season opens.

The tennis team this year is somewhat young carrying only two upper classmen on its roster. Meghan Fitzpatrick is the lone senior who will take the role of leading her other teammates that include one junior, four sophomores, and four freshmen.

With many new faces being added to the squad, there will be time to learn and build on what they already have under their belts to become better through this year.

They are coming off the 2015 season with an overall record of 6-15. Last season, the team went 1-6 at home, 2-5 on the road and 3-4 in neutral locations. In conference, they went 2-9.

The goals from Bolesky are, to build up the girls and encourage them to be the best they can be on and off the court and giving them courage and confidence in everything they do.