Elinor Beazley and Mimi Bland Ready to Return After Extensive First Offseason at NAU

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (January 13, 2021) – Seeking an avenue to continue their tennis careers, Elinor Beazley and Mimi Bland arrived at Northern Arizona University a little more than a year ago.

Beazley, a sophomore from Swansea, Wales, started playing tennis at six years old and has represented South Wales since she was 10. Beazley earned her first Welsh title in 2016 at 15 years old in addition to helping her team win three Welsh titles and finish in the top 16 in Great Britain while at Ralph Allen School.

Bland, also a sophomore from Harpenden, England, has been playing since she was five years old and won both the singles and doubles championships at the Junior International Edinburgh tournament in 2018.

The two said they elected to come to NAU after seeing the program's facility and meeting the team's coaching staff, while also knowing they needed to head overseas in order to find their next opportunity to play.

"I liked the facilities and the possibilities in America. It was just such a great opportunity to even be able to have the chance to go to America. I wanted to continue doing tennis," Beazley said. 

Bland also expressed how during her visit with NAU, she too was fond of the coaching staff.

"I also really liked the coaches and I thought they'd be a good fit for me," Bland said.

Both Bland and Beazley weren't left on their own to find a university in the United States, with each player aided by agencies in the United Kingdom as they began to research schools across the Atlantic.

"I went through an agency called Sport USA, who helped a girl a year above also choose her uni," Bland said.

A CHALLENGING BEGINNING 

Since arriving at NAU from the UK, it has been anything but a normal college experience for Beazley and Bland as their first season in the US was derailed by forces outside of their control. 

While the two were able to play through their first fall season, filled with invitationals across the Western United States, the spring schedule ended just weeks into the season. As the outbreak of COVID-19 reached the United States in mid-March, a lockdown soon followed. In an instant, all sports nationwide were canceled indefinitely with Bland and Beazley only playing in eight and nine matches respectively throughout the spring. 

"I remember finding out when we were told basically we weren't going to be having a season, just cause we didn't get to play any conference matches, which was quite upsetting not just for us, but for the entire team,"  Beazley said. 

With the NCAA shutting down all winter and spring championships on March 12, the Big Sky Conference followed with its own cancellations on March 18. Right up until the decision, the Lumberjacks had expected to face off against Montana State and Sacramento State on March 13 and 15.

"I think it was basketball that got canceled and that's kind of when it hit home a bit like, 'Oh, maybe this is more serious than we were expecting.' The day after the coach sat us down and said, 'we're not going to be able to play any matches'," Beazley said.

For the two, and all student-athletes across campus, it was both confusing and upsetting as they didn't know when they would be able to return to their sport or how bad the pandemic was eventually going to become. For Beazley, she was able to fly back to see her family, but it still didn't change the fact that she lost more than half of her freshman season. 

"I'm lucky enough that I could fly home and come home to my parents and be safe and everything, but I was quite upset," Beazley said. 

SUCCESS EARLY ON

When the two did manage to get on the court as freshmen, both quickly found plenty of success as Lumberjacks. Bland landed at the No. 1 doubles spot alongside teammate Adrianna Sosnowska, finishing the spring with a 5-2 record, including a 2-0 Big Sky Conference record. During the fall schedule, the pair finished as the runner-up at the ITA Mountain Regional Championships while also ranking at No. 25 in the Oracle ITA National Fall Rankings.

Beazley held a 2-0 record in the Big Sky Conference across both singles and doubles in addition to her 7-8 record in singles during the fall's invitational play ahead of the spring season. 

Now the two are eager for the upcoming season and expressed how they feel prepared physically to return to competition. They agreed the mental aspect of actually playing competitive matches after a much longer offseason than normal will be the most challenging. 

As a result, Beazley and Bland's focus moved to finding ways to remain prepared for when tennis returns later this month. In addition to the season being canceled, the two were forced to get creative in playing or training on their own apart from the team as a whole.

"I got to practice a lot more, which was good because it means I'm hitting the ball really well," Beazley said. "Then again, practicing and matches are two completely different things, but everyone else is in the same situation,". 

While practicing on their own allowed the two to keep up some semblance of normalcy, replicating match conditions was naturally the challenge.

"I think generally it really helped all of us to work on our game, but it would have been nice to have some like practice matches as well," Bland said. "Playing a match is so mentally different to practice. With practice, you're like, 'Oh well I'll just, try it again and keep going until I make it.' You don't really have that option in March. So that bit will definitely be really tough."