NWC Championship Preview

Apr 202012
 


WALLA WALLA, Wash. — The five-time Northwest Conference champion Whitman College men’s tennis team shoots for a spot in its sixth straight NCAA Division III national championship field when it hosts the annual NWC post-season tournament this weekend.

Whitman earned the right to host the four-team tournament by finishing atop the regular season standings with a 12-0 record, continuing an era of dominance now measured in years rather than weeks or months.

Whitman has stockpiled six consecutive undefeated NWC regular seasons, winning its last 90 matches. The winning streak began in April of 2006.

Pacific enters this weekend’s tournament as the No. 2 seed after posting an 11-1 NWC record during the spring season. The lone blemish on the Boxer record was a 7-2 loss to Whitman in early March in Forest Grove, Ore.

Third-seeded George Fox (9-3 NWC) and fourth-seeded Whitworth (8-4 NWC) complete this weekend’s tournament field.

Saturday’s first semifinal gets started at 10 a.m. and pits favored Whitman against underdog Whitworth (click here for match preview). Whitman and Whitworth are the only two schools to play in all 14 NWC tennis tournaments since the conference adopted a team championship format in 1999.

Saturday’s second semifinal, which starts at about 2 p.m., matches No. 2 Pacific against No. 3 George Fox (click here for a match preview). Pacific is making its second straight appearance in the post-season tournament while George Fox is competing for the first time since 2005.

Saturday’s winners meet at 11 a.m. Sunday to play for the NWC’s automatic berth in the NCAA DIII national championship field. Whitman has already won the 2012 NWC title by virtue of its first-place finish in the regular season standings.

Whitman, 19-4 on the season, enters the tournament as the top-ranked NCAA DIII team in the West Region. It also has risen to No. 8 in national ranking, its highest such position in more than two decades.

Whitman, which has yet to lose to an NCAA DIII team this season, is a combined 5-0 this spring against the other three tournament teams. In addition to its 7-2 victory over Pacific, it blanked Whitworth 9-0 and beat George Fox twice, 9-0 and 6-3.

Pacific, No. 11 in the latest regional rankings, is 13-2 against NCAA DIII teams this spring. Its only DIII loss (other than to Whitman) came in a 8-1 setback to Colby during a Spring Break trip to Florida.

Pacific, 13-5 overall this season, has one victory apiece over both George Fox (winning 5-4 in mid-March) and Whitworth (prevailing 8-1 in early March).


George Fox, 10-7 on the season and No. 12 in the regional rankings, has beaten Whitworth twice this spring, winning 7-2 in early March and 5-4 just last week. Whitworth is 11-8 overall.

Fans of all four teams can disregard those earlier results once the tournament gets underway, says Whitman coach and tournament hostJeff Northam.

“Those of us with the Whitman program look forward to playing, and we know the other three teams — Pacific, George Fox and Whitworth — are playing well as they come into the conference tournament,” Northam says. “All three teams are legitimate contenders to represent the NWC at the NCAA Division III tournament in May.”

Weather permitting, matches this weekend will be played on the four outdoor courts at Whitman. The Bratton Tennis Center (four indoor courts) is the standby in case of rain.

Matches start with three flights of doubles before moving into the six flights of singles. Each match ends as soon as one team scores the clinching fifth team point.

This season marks the second year that NWC has used a four-team tournament to award its automatic berth in the national championship tournament.

Prior to last year, the top six teams advanced to the post-season tournament, which also was used to decide the conference championship.

Tennis fans not able to watch this weekend’s matches in person can access a Live Tennis Blog for scoring updates as doubles and singles matches play out.

Wow long day

Mar 102012
 

We had a long, crazy day of tennis/travel today. Started off driving from Portland to Newberg for a match against George Fox. Despite the rain we managed to get in the doubles. Unfortunately for us we got off to a very slow start dropping #1 and #3 doubles. Fortunately we got the win at #2 doubles and also won #5 singles (neither player was in doubles so they played during the doubles). With the score tied at 2-2 the rain started coming down so we drove an hour to Vancouver, WA to get on indoor courts. I think this is the only time in my coaching career we started a match in one state and finished in another!

In singles we rolled to 1st set victories in all the matches. At #3 Conor won the first set but his opponent really picked up his play and won the second set and the decisive match tie-breaker. Otherwise we won all the matches in straight sets.

Immediately after the match we drove back to Oregon to play Pacific University. After another hour drive we got out of the van for a brief warm-up and played a very hot Pacific team. In doubles we won #2 and #3 doubles but dropped a tough match at #1 (Jeff/Andrew).

In singles the tired Whitties rolled to straight set wins at every position except #4 where James ran into a buzz saw dropping his match in straight sets.

Pretty good day — we defeated the #2 and #3 teams in our conference in back-to-back matches.

Tomorrow we again play a double header — Linfield at 11am followed by Lewis-Clark.

Whitman 6 George Fox 3

  1. Conor/Matt lost Mann/Aldrich 8-6
  2. Jeff/Andrew def Brown/McClain 8-2
  3. James/Sam lost Milton/Munoz 8-1

 

  1. Andrew def Mann 6-2, 6-3
  2. Jeff def Aldrich 6-1, 6-4
  3. Conor lost McClain 4-6, 6-0, 10-4
  4. James def Milton 6-2, 6-3
  5. Adriel def Tweet 6-1, 6-0
  6. Steven def Munoz 6-2, 7-5

Whitman 7 Pacific 2

  1. Andrew/Jeff lost Zuroske/Battaglia 8-5
  2. Matt/Conor def Hing/Kawamura 8-4
  3. Sam/James def Schlack/Wong 8-2

 

  1. Andrew def Zuroske 6-2, 6-0
  2. Jeff def Hing 6-4, 6-4
  3. Conor def Battaglia 6-3, 6-4
  4. James lost Schlack 6-0, 6-2
  5. Sam def Furuya 6-3, 6-2
  6. Adriel def Kawamura 7-5, 6-0

 

NWC Tournament Finals!

Apr 172011
 


The NWC conference tournament started yesterday on the Whitman campus. Unlike past years, this year’s tournament is limited to the top four teams. The winner of the tournament gets an automatic bid to the NCAA III team tournament in May.

Yesterday we defeated Pacific 5-0 setting up today’s 11am final against #2 seed Willamette. Against Pacific we got off to a quick start in doubles sweeping all three matches 8-4, 8-2, 8-2. In singles we were up in all four matches when ET (6-1, 6-1) and Andrew (6-3, 6-0) closed out their matches giving us 5 points.
Weather looks great for todays finals. Should be a great final match. The Bearcats look to be playing solid tennis and will be out for revenge after we defeated 9-0 on their home courts earlier in the year.
We had a GREAT crowd in yesterday’s semi finals and hope everyone will be out in force for today’s final. As thanks to the fans we will be providing Hepler’s Big Cheese Pizza at the start of today’s match.
Hope to see everyone at the courts!

Team takes big strides to clinching 4th straight NWC title.

Apr 052011
 

This past weekend was a special and unique coaching weekend. Yes the team went 3-0 and moved one step closer to one of our goals of winning the NWC title. But more interesting was that my 8 year old daughter made the road trip with the team to Portland. I honestly can’t remember seeing her so excited (with the exception of Christmas). All week all she could talk about was going on a trip with the team. When I woke her up Friday morning she jumped out of bed and rushed upstairs to start her morning because it was the big day. Was a lot of fun watching the team interact with her — she had 12 big brothers who were willing to playing catch, run around after her, and/or carrying her around. It was a weekend she will remember for a long time!

Portland Trip Part 1

Feb 212011
 

What a fun trip to Portland. Even though we didn’t play until today we decided to travel to Forest Grove, OR on Friday night to watch our basketball teams play Pacific. I would like to think we gave our women’s basketball team a bit of lift. I’m not sure if it was the very loud cheering or the shock of seeing the men’s tennis team with “Missionaries!” painted across their chests but whatever it was the women’s team a 22-0 run once we arrived at the gym! By virtual of the win the women clinched the #4 seed in the upcoming conference tournament. We stayed on to cheer on the men’s team but unfortunately they dropped a heart breaker. Congratulations to Coach Ferenz and Coach Bridgeland — both have done a tremendous with the Whitman basketball programs. The women finished the year as the #4 team in the conference and the men finished #2!

Today (Sunday) was a long, cold day of tennis. This morning we started off playing Pacific University at their covered courts. It was certainly chilly in the morning — in fact, high during temp during the match was 42 with a wind chill of 39!!!! Fortunately going into the weekend we knew it was going to be cold so everyone brought heavy jackets, gloves and long underwear.

The cold weather wasn’t our only problem today. We played a much improved Pacific team in their covered facility. The Pacific facility features three covered courts but the screens surrounding the courts are normal windscreens. With a covered roof and normal wind screens around the courts the lighting is very strange. The layout makes tracking the ball very difficult — almost like watching a ball under a strobe light.

In doubles #2 (ET and Jeff) started off strong going up 6-0 in about 30 minutes. Jeff and ET’s tremendous energy fired up the rest of the team and got us on the board with a quick 8-1 win. At #3 Quin and Matt won 8-3 and at #1 Andrew and Conor were deadlocked at 5-5 when they went on a roll winning 3 straight games.

In singles we maintained our strong play sweeping 5 of the matches in straight sets. Our only loss was at #3 singles where Jeff ran into a buzz-saw freshman Troy Zuroske. Troy played great tennis hammering huge serves all match. His serve coupled with the strange lighting made for a rough day for Jeff. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Zuroske playing #1 for the Boxers in the next fews. After watching him play today I’m convinced he will be one of the top players in the NWC Conference.

Once the Pacific match finished we made sandwiches and headed to George Fox for our afternoon match. After a short warm-up we took to the courts to play an incredibly fired up Fox team. It was fun to see the Bruins completely fired up and ready to battle us for every point. I know their energy made us raise our level of play.

Once again Jeff and ET got us going with with a solid start (I think they again went up 6-0). Both #2 doubles and #3 doubles finished with 8-2 victories. At #1 doubles Andrew and Conor broke open a close match winning the final four games posting an 8-4 victory.

In singles we sat our normal #3 (ET) and #4 (Jeff). This gave Adriel Borshanksy (#5) and Steve Roston (#6) the opportunity to get in some valuable match play experience. Both rose to the occassion winning 6-1, 6-1, and 6-2, 6-1. The most competitive match of the day was at #1 where Conor Holton-Burke got a measure of revenge (Barnett handed Conor his only conference loss last year) defeating Scott Barnett 6-4, 5-7, 10-6. A bit of an interesting match. In the 2nd set Conor got up an early break and served for the 2nd set at 5-4 only to get broke and then drop the set. However in the tie-break he played inspired tennis racing out to a 6-0 lead before winning 10-5.

Big kudos to Coach Ninteman, he has turned around the George Fox tennis program and I’m sure they will be a force within the conference for a long time.

We finish our road trip tomorrow at 1pm match in Salem against Willamette. Even with warm weather in the forecast (high of 52), Willamette has decided to play the match off campus at an indoor tennis club (Courthouse)a few miles from campus.

Links to the matches

Whitman 8 Pacific 1
Whitman 9 George Fox 0

Special thanks to the Mah and La Cava families for the incredible hospitality this weekend.

Match time changes this weekend.

Feb 172011
 

Weather might be an issue this weekend in the Portland area.

Our Sunday match against Pacific is now changed to 9am.

If we encounter wet weather the George Fox match will take place 2pm at Tualatin Hills otherwise it will be at 3pm in Newberg.

On Monday our match against Willamette will be at 1pm if indoors (Courthouse) or 2pm if dry (at Willamette).

Hope to see you at the courts!

Senior Day!!!!

Apr 032010
 

Yesterday we honored our seven seniors before our home match against Pacific. To say these seniors have had an impact on Whitman and the tennis program is an understatement. They have set the bar incredibly high for any sports team at Whitman. These seven seniors have never lost a regular season conference team match (60+ and counting), have qualified for three straight NCAA III appearances, won two conference titles, been an ITA All-Academic team for three straight years and have a team GPA around a 3.5!

7 matches in 5 days!

Mar 172010
 

Yesterday we finished the Portland phase of our spring break trip with a 9-0 victory over Pacific University. In the past five days we have gone 7-0 in conference play! During that stretch we defeated what I think are three of the best teams in the conference (PLU, Linfield, and Willamette). Also during this stretch we have only lost 4 individual matches! I’m feeling very good where we are as a team and how we are currently playing.

Against Pacific we started with singles (looked like it was going to rain) and we quickly ran away with the match. I think we lost a total of 16 games in the singles. Pacific is a up-coming-team and they have steadily improved each of the past few years under the guidance of Coach Jackson. However our depth and experience was simply too much for them as quickly went through the singles.
With the first phase of our trip under our belts we are headed to UC Santa Cruz where we play three great matches this weekend — UC Santa Cruz, Cal Lutheran and Pomona. The new rankings come out today and I would expect both UCSC and Cal Lu to be top 10 and Pomona in the top 20. We couldn’t ask for a better opportunity to play against some of the top teams in the nation.
Speaking of rankings, the latest d3tennis power rankings has Whitman at #21 in the nation. We are currently 13-1 on the year (only loss to #1 UC Santa Cruz) and 12-0 in conference.

Two more wins during Spring Break!

Mar 172009
 

Earlier today we split the Whitman horde into two teams to take on Pacific and George Fox. Both matches took place at 9am — I had the Pacific group and Coach Ann had the George Fox group.

Against Pacific we came out with good energy and were able to quickly capture all three doubles matches. The #1 combo of Christoph and Quin struggled a bit in the early going of their match. I felt like they were playing well and getting the opportunity to finish points but just couldn’t win the big points. After going down 1-3 they won 7 straight games for an 8-3 victory.

In singles play the closest match of the day was at #5 where Justin Hayashi defeated Nhat Nguyen 6-4, 6-3. Christoph and Quin continued their strong play in singles with Quin winning 6-0, 6-1 and Christoph winning 8-1 (shortened match due to time).

Whitman 9 Pacific 0

Against George Fox the highlight of the day was Thomas Roston’s thrilling victory at #4 singles. Normally a 6-0, 6-0 isn’t thrilling but Thomas was up 6-0, 3-0 before he lost a point! Wow what a great effort (for the record he lost 2 points the entire match).

Also of note Jake and Adriel both won their matches in 3rd set super-breakers! Outside of #1 and #2 singles all the matches had at least one 6-0 set! Perhaps it is the coaching! Kudo’s to Coach Ann:)

Whitman 9 George Fox 0

We are currently 10-0 in conference play and 11-2 overall. In the latest rankings that were released earlier today we slipped two spots to #21 (even though we have yet to lose a DIII match) and are #5 in the West region.

Match changes!
Wednesday’s match against Willamette has been moved to 11am at the Courthouse Tennis Center

Thursday’s match against Linfield moved to 10am at the Courthouse Tennis Center in Salem!

Getting Ready For The Weekend

Feb 272009
 

The Fighting Squirrels of Whitman College (aka the Men’s tennis team) is getting ready for a weekend of interesting and intense play. On Sunday we take on University of Montana at 10am at home (Bratton Tennis Center). Its not often that a DI come through town and we are looking forward to playing the Grizz. Hopefully the Squirrels can out scamper and outhustle the powerful Grizzlies! Also on Sunday at 10am we will be playing conference opponent UPS at UPS.

For those keeping track that is two matches at the same time at different locations! Coach Ann will be working with one group of guys at home and I’ll be taking another group to Tacoma. I’m nervous about playing two good teams at the same time. However it will be a great challenge for our team and everyone will get to play meaningful matches.
Last weekend we had a similiar split squad stragety against George Fox and Pacific. The Squirrels really stepped up to the plate defeating both George Fox and Pacific 9-0. Click the links below for match scores.