After suffering losses in both of their past two matches, the Cardinals garnered a hard-fought victory this weekend, making the bus ride back from Clinton, N.Y. a pleasant one. The Cards came out on top of the Hamilton Continentals, 5-4, after winning a three-set match, which broke the 4-4 tie they faced.
The team was expected to defeat the Continentals, but Hamilton, which has improved a great deal since last year, proved to be a good test for the Cardinals’ game and focus.
Starting off the match with doubles, the Cards lost two of out three matches. The number one doubles team of Jeff Legunn ’13 and Michael Piderit ’12 fell 5-8, along with the number three team of Don Kleckner ’13 and Robert Troyer ’12, who were defeated by the same score. The freshman duo of Alex Hirsch ’13 and Ravy Uong ’13, playing at number two doubles, captured the lone victory, 8-6.
“It was Ravy’s and my first win together at number two doubles, which I think will allow us to relax and hopefully make more happen,” Hirsch said about the well-executed win.
Going into singles, there was pressure to win at least four of the six matches in order to win the contest against the Continentals. This pressure motivated the Cards to play with all they had, and to focus on the end goal.
“We did a great job of getting ahead early in our singles matches to steal the momentum back,” said team captain Garrett Blank ’11.
Once the momentum got going in the singles matches, there was no stopping the Cards from playing hard and coming out victorious. The pressure proved to be nothing but a positive factor with four solid singles wins. Number one singles player Legunn won by scores of 6-3 and 6-3; number four Uong, 6-4, 6-3; and number six Michael Glen ’13, 6-3, 6-2. Finally, in a close three-set match, Hirsch was victorious 6-2, 4-6, 6-3.
“Hirsch has proven to be a teammate that we can count on to win the big matches,” Blank said. “After he won, we all charged his court and celebrated.”
With the win, the Cardinals improved to 8-0 all-time against the Continentals since the teams first met in spring 2003. Wesleyan’s eight-match winning streak against the Continentals is also its second-longest current winning streak against a NESCAC foe, trailing only its nine-match run against Connecticut College.
Capturing the big win against Hamilton, along with traveling together, has provided a sense of team camaraderie, a necessity in tennis. With a boost of confidence from their first NESCAC win, the team will travel to Massachusetts to face Amherst in a Little Three dual match Thursday, April 8. Hirsch is excited about the upcoming contest.
“We expect them to be good,” he said. “Amherst is my hometown, so I look forward to the match. I am certainly going to play extremely hard and do whatever I can to get the win or at least make them work their asses off for it.”
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