This past weekend, Wesleyan tennis suffered a pair of losses in NESCAC play after facing two nationally-ranked teams in Amherst and Bowdoin. On Saturday, the Cards traveled up to face their Little Three rival for both teams’ first action in division play. The squad only managed to pull out one win during the affair: a 6-3 victory at #1 for Matt O’Connell ’09. The #13 ranked Jeffs proved too much for the Cardinals and took the rest of the matches.
The team returned home to face #21 Bowdoin on Sunday only to have the same fate as the day before. The Polar Bears won 8-1, the only point coming from a doubles win by the pair of O’Connell and Matt Schaff ’11. However, the Cards put up a hard fight as Tri-captain Michael Frank ’08 and Graham Immerman ’09 pushed their matches to three sets but were unable to come away with wins.
The Cards will look to bounce back from these defeats as they will be making a trip to Maine to face Colby on Saturday Morning. Last year Colby was able to defeat Wesleyan by a score of 5-2. The Cards hope to reverse that result, though the Mules will be another tough opponent as they are perennially in the top 30 in the Division III rankings so hopefully it is a down year for them and the Cards can edge out a win.
Wesleyan, being in a tight conference, will need a positive result over the weekend to pull them back into the playoff picture. Only six of the eleven teams in the NESCAC have the chance to participate in the playoffs, so each conference match is extremely important as teams will constantly be jockeying for position throughout the season. Currently, the Cards are 0-2 in NESCAC play with four more matches to play in the division. If the team wishes to enter the postseason, the first step towards that goal will be defeating Colby and getting its first win in the conference.
Frank seemed to have the same thoughts.
“Although we suffered some losses this past weekend, we know we can compete against high level teams,” he said. “We just need to put a few good wins together because winning is contagious. If there is one sickness to catch, I guess winning is a good one at this time of year.”
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