With only two days to go before the NESCAC tournament and momentum certainly not on their side, Wesleyan’s men’s tennis team turned it around, knocking off the Springfield College Pride in 7-0 rout on Wednesday.
With the NESCAC tournament underway, the Cardinals have finally found their strokes, or so they hope. After an inconsistent series of three wins and three losses, Wesleyan spent their final week in up and down fashion as well.
Last Friday the Cardinals faced off with their bitter rivals, the Williams College Ephs, in perhaps their biggest match of the season. Against a quality Williams team, the Cardinals managed only one match victory, and headed home to Middletown a frustrated team. Things did not get much better two days later, as the Cardinals dropped a heartbreaker to Colby in New London, 4-3.
The Williams match, simply put, was a brutal day for the Cardinals. Only sixth seed, Michael Frank ’08, managed to pick up a win, downing his Eph opponent 6-2, 3-6, 10-4 in a third set super tiebreaker. In the next game, Colby squeaked by with a narrow victory.
“The Colby match was a tough loss, but I feel like we played some really great tennis,” said Jack Rooney ’07. “Colby is really similar to us, and I feel like that was the kind of match we were looking for all season, and when we finally got it, we weren’t able to pull it out. I really don’t think it will affect our play at the NESCAC tourney though.”
The afternoon began promisingly enough, as ace Max Kates ’06 won his match 6-4, 6-4. Kates, who had missed the match with Williams due to a class, has a lot of confidence in his game at this point. The next two seeds, however, did not play as well as Kates. Both Tallen Todorovich ’06 and Matt Cron ’05 dropped their matches. Todorovich lost in straight sets, while Cron, took his Mule opponent to the limit, ultimately losing in the third set.
“The Colby match sucked,” Todorovich said. “I played like shit.”
The Cardinals, however, got back in the win column with big wins from fourth seed Evan Rhodes ’05 and sixth seed Rooney as each won in two sets, sandwiching a heartbreaking loss from senior Mike Roguly in the fifth spot. In all, the Cardinals managed to split the six singles matches with the Mules, 3 to 3, and had a chance to pull it out with great play from their doubles teams. Unfortunately, only the third doubles team of Cron and Roguly found themselves a win, taking home their match 9-8. Todorovich and Rhodes dropped the top doubles game 8-2 and Kates and Rooney found themselves on the short end of an 8-5 match.
“My doubles match was not the best, and the loss especially hurt after Roguly and Cron pulled it out at three doubles,” Rooney said. “Max and I were able to pull together quite a come back, however, we weren’t able to finish strong, and it really hurt us in the long run.”
In a sense, that was the story of the day for the Cardinals, as one tough match after another bounced the wrong way for Wesleyan and Colby lucked their way into a win.
With only days to go before the NESCAC tourney, the Cardinals had just one match to turn their luck around, and they did not miss their chance against Springfield College.
Wesleyan pounded the non-conference foes 7-0, not losing a single set in the process. “Easy match, easy pickings,” Kates said of the romp. “Basically we had more skill than them and it came out in the box score. It was not a competitive match.”
As for the tourney, the Cardinals expect big things from themselves.
“[Our goal is] to kick serious ass,” Kates said.
If the Cardinals play as well as they did against Springfield and use the momentum and confidence in their favor, the up-and-down Cardinals could end the season on the greatest up-note of them all, a conference championship.
“The team has a lot of potential,” Rooney said. “And I hope it really shows this weekend.”
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