While many of Wesleyan’s fall teams opened their seasons this past weekend with intercollegiate competition, the men’s tennis team spent Saturday morning practicing on the Vine Street courts in preparation for a full slate of fall action. On Sunday, Sept. 16 the Cards will open their season with an invitational at Wheaton College followed by a dual match at Springfield on Wednesday the 19th.

Like most teams do as seasons begin, the men’s tennis team will look to a core of veterans to lead the way early on. The cream of the Wesleyan tennis crop may be gone—including Tallen Todorovich ’07 and Jack Rooney ’07, who filled the first and second singles spots as well as first doubles—but a junior-laden squad that boosts eight returnees with multiple seasons of experience looks to negate the graduation effect and produce a season more remarkable than the 7-10 overall finish in 2006-07.

“We are all competitors, but at the same time we all want to see each other do well,” said senior tri-captain Mike “Franchise” Frank ’08, who will return as a dominant doubles player and compete for one of the top singles spot. “This is one of the most experienced teams we’ve had and that should pay off from top to bottom.”

The Cards are not lacking experience, by any means. Frank, along with fellow tri-captains Pauri Paudian ’08, and Max Schenkin ’08, as well as a coalition of juniors including Jaafar Rizvi ’09, Alejandro Alvarado ’09, Paul Gerdes ’09, Graham Immerman ’09, and Matt O’Connell, ’09 have held down spots in the singles and doubles rotation for the past two years. Frank turned in an 8-7 record for singles matches last season, while O’Connell recorded a team best 12-3 singles record, and Gerdes finished with an overall record of 9-7.

It will be impossible for the team to survive with only a few standout players. The nature of the scoring relies on relative success from first singles through third doubles. While a top-heavy team might win big matches, as the Cards did last year, a winning team is one that competes well across the board. The 2007-08 team looks to be this type of top-bottom skilled team that can win matches in bunches and improve their overall record.

“We’ve all worked hard to get to a point where we feel comfortable with each match-up each day,” O’Connell said. “Now it seems like we are at that point and things look pretty good.”

Aside from the vets, sophomores Miles Krieger ’10 and Roy Chung ’10, who showed signs of brilliance in limited action last year, could break out in a big way for the team this year. According to many on the team, new face Matt Schaff ’11 also has the talent do great things this year and just has to adjust to collegiate competition.

After the Springfield dual match this coming Wednesday, the team hosts MIT in its first home match on Wednesday, Sept. 26. The pinnacle of the fall, however, will be the ITA Regionals, held this year at Williams College from Sept. 28 through the 30th. A weekend of serious New England competition should test the Cards from top to bottom, and hopefully they will prevail in a way that they haven’t in years past.