The Wesleyan men’s tennis team has had quite the start to the 2025 spring season. Sitting at 7–3, they are poised to make a strong run in the postseason. Still, with the bulk of their remaining games against the NESCAC’s best teams, the Cards have a long way to go before worrying about the playoffs.
Heading into 2025, the Red and Black were disappointed by last season’s performance. Finishing at 6–11, they felt they had more in the tank that they weren’t able to harness. After losing four players from last season, two of whom graduated, the Cards didn’t add any first-years to their roster, which only put more pressure on their eight returning players. While the Red and Black could have set goals for themselves with regard to wins or numbers, they opted to enter the 2025 season focused on playing more freely and loosening up on the court.
“I think the biggest goal was to kind of just improve on everything we did last year,” captain Max Lustgarten ’25 said. “We definitely struggled a bit last year in our matches against higher-ranked teams. So one of our biggest focuses was to work on our toughness in those close matches: playing big points well, competing when things are really tight against teams that are either ranked higher than us or really close to us. It was a big goal of ours to hit the ground running early in the season, and getting the confidence from wins early on made things a lot easier for us moving forward.”
Wesleyan kicked off the 2025 campaign in a home match on Saturday, March 8 against no. 8 Bowdoin. Although the stat sheet wouldn’t show it, the Cards kept all their matches close. However, a couple too many balls bounced in the Polar Bears’ favor. Despite a strong win from captain Harry Collomb ’26 at no. 2 singles, the Red and Black fell behind in doubles and every other singles match, losing 4–1. Despite the loss, the Cards remained optimistic after the match.
“We were in every single match,” Collomb said. “A couple third sets here, a couple breaks there. Obviously, it didn’t work out the way that we wanted to. But coming out of that match, we genuinely came out of that with a huge amount of confidence that we can compete with any team in the country.”
The Cards hosted Colby the next day, looking to bounce back after dropping their first match. The Red and Black started hot, taking apart the Mules’ doubles pairings and cruising to three early victories. Last year, this would have given the Cardinals a 3–0 lead heading into singles. However, starting this season, Division III (D-III) tennis adapted its doubles rules to be the same as Division I (D-I), where each singles match is worth one point, and whichever team wins the majority of doubles matches gets one additional point towards the match. Additionally, doubles were reduced from eight-game matches to six-, shortening the amount of time doubles matches take before singles. With the three doubles wins, Wes took a 1–0 lead before heading to singles play.
Both Wesleyan tennis programs emphasize the importance of getting ahead in doubles matches for the sake of advantage and momentum.
“We spend a lot of time on our doubles, and we take pride in it,” Lustgarten said. “We try to emphasize playing with super high energy and being really ‘in your face’ with the other teams. At Colby we did a really good job with that. We were out in front quickly on all three courts, and even though it’s only one point instead of three, it’s definitely still a huge confidence boost to get all three matches there.”
The Cards used the momentum they gained from doubles to breeze through singles, winning five of six matches on their way to their first win of the season. On Wednesday, March 12, the Red and Black picked up another win, as they defeated Stevens Institute of Technology 6–1.
Before heading south for their Spring Break trip, the Red and Black played against no. 21 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a team they lost to last season. With no. 1 singles player JT Bilski ’26 injured, the team rallied once again behind its strong doubles play to set the tone, sweeping the Engineers in three hard-fought matches. After one singles win and two losses, Lustgarten and Max Litton ’26 pulled off back-to-back wins to secure the match for the Cards.
“I played the same guy that I played last year, and I feel like there’s always a little bit more pressure,” Litton said. “It also helped that Max [Lustgarten] was next to me destroying his opponent and Tai [MacDonald ’26] was next to me fighting. That built some confidence, to have that support on the sides.”
After starting the year 2–1, the Cards packed their bags and headed down to Newport News, Va. for their Spring Break trip. The first of the Red and Black’s three matches came against no. 21 Christopher Newport University. Each doubles match was neck-and-neck, with all three wins coming past the six-game threshold. Brett Keeling ’27 and Chase Kasday ’26 got Wes on the board first with a 7–5 win, but the other two matches reached 6–6 and required next-game-wins games. Lustgarten and Jex Frankel ’27 put away their opponents at third doubles, and Collomb and Litton did the same, earning Wes the first point of the match.
The singles matches did not lack excitement, either. The Red and Black dropped matches at first, third, and fifth singles, giving CNU a 3–1 lead. The Cards did not back down, though, as Lustgarten won a second set tiebreak to get Wesleyan back on the board and Kasday tied the overall match up with a three-set win of his own. With the match on the line, MacDonald, after letting his opponent claw back into the final set, was battling in a third-set tiebreaker. With the tiebreaker going back and forth, CNU’s singles player was able to string together a couple of good shots that knocked MacDonald off kilter and got the Captains the win.
“It was pretty devastating losing that,” Collomb said. “I felt so bad for Tai, because he felt like he had that match. Even though we lost, I remember talking to everyone after about how this was one of the best matches we’ve ever been a part of. It showed how far we’ve come as a team. So yeah, that was a heartbreaking loss, but again, it was still a confidence builder.”
The Cards kept their heads held high after the CNU loss and remained positive heading into their second match of the trip against no. 27 University of Mary Washington. Wes bounced back after a quick loss at first doubles, capturing wins at second and third doubles to give them the first match. Lustgarten, Litton, Keeling, and Kasday all thrived in their singles matches, powering the Cards to a 5–2 win.
The final match of the trip was against no. 16 Kenyon College. With the Cards as the underdog, they emphasized playing loose and settling into their rhythm as being critical to pulling off the upset.
Kasday and Keeling led the way during doubles, cleaning up at second doubles with a 6–3 win. The other two courts fed off of them, striking first blood against the Owls, as third doubles won their match 6–4, and first doubles battled to a tiebreak where they won 7–6 (8–6).
Like they had already countless times this season, the Cards built off their success in doubles and carried it into their singles matches. Although Bilski fell at first singles, Litton and Keeling made quick work of their opponents, winning at fourth and fifth singles rather quickly. With the Cards one win away, Kasday, Collomb, and Lustgarten all were up with chances to win as the match entered the home stretch. As Kasday put the finishing touches on his win, the team rejoiced, knowing they had just pulled off quite the upset.
“I remember slowing down a little bit to watch Chase [Kasday]’s match,” Collomb said. “When Chase clinched, I looked at [Max] Lustgarten and I walked over to his court and gave him a hug. He said to me, ‘There’s no surprise here. This is what we do. This is the team that we are.’ I remember standing at the baseline, getting ready to serve after we had clinched, and just being like, ‘Holy shit, we just fucking beat that team.’”
The Cards’ first games after Spring Break were on Saturday, March 29 and Sunday, March 30, against Hamilton and no. 9 Amherst. After feeding off the momentum from doubles in almost every match up to that point, the Red and Black benefited from the fact that doubles are only worth one match total, as the Continentals gained the upper hand early by sweeping doubles. Only down 1–0 in the match, Wes kept their composure and slowly fought their way back into the match.
“Everybody was proud of how nobody really backed down or lost faith,” Litton said. “And we did just that, winning five straight. The momentum definitely shifted once we hit singles.”
The Red and Black rattled off five straight singles wins to end the match on top, 5–2. The next day, the Mammoths posed much more of a challenge than the Continentals. The Cards were only able to salvage one doubles win from Collomb and Litton at first doubles and a third singles win from Lustgarten in a 6–1 loss.
On April 6, the Cards traveled down the Connecticut River to face the Conn. College Camels. Wes returned to their winning ways in doubles, sweeping the Camels in all three matches and taking four wins in singles to win 5–2.
As the regular season continues, the no. 14 ranked Cardinals have some of their biggest roadblocks ahead. They travel to face no. 2 Tufts this Saturday, followed by Bates and Trinity, before finishing their season on the road against no. 7 Middlebury and no. 28 Williams on back-to-back days. The Ephs will certainly be looking for revenge after Wes pulled off a massive upset against last year’s no. 5 ranked team. Even with all the challenges ahead, the Red and Black are optimistic for what’s to come after such a strong start to the year.
“I think it’s just exciting at this point,” Lustgarten said. “We knew how hard we wanted to work, how much we wanted to put into this on and off the court. I give so much props to every guy on this team, because we’ve fully bought into that. We have some tough matches coming up, but I think our goal is to just enjoy them as much as we can, understand how far we’ve come, and just play loose. Go out there with the mentality of appreciating the opportunity for these last few matches and we’ll see where that takes us.”
Max Forstein can be reached at mforstein@wesleyan.edu.
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