Whitties go 5-0 in Oregon

Mar 132012
 

Sorry for the late write up on our Portland swing but its been a couple long coaching days. After we defeated Pacific and George Fox on Saturday we turned around and played another double header on Sunday — Linfield in the morning followed by Lewis Clark College in the afternoon. While daylight savings time is wonderful (who doesn’t like more sunlight) let me tell you it can be a drag trying to get a bunch of college students up an hour earlier on a Sunday morning! Actually the guys were great and didn’t complain (much) about getting up earlier.

For our Sunday matches I was able to juggle the line-ups a bit to allow people to rest. Even with different line-ups and doubles partners we rolled to 9-0 victories over Linfield and Lewis & Clark.

Monday we continued our spring trip with a match in Salem against Willamette. We knew this was going to be a tough match as Willamette is the team we have faced the past two years in the conference finals. The Whitman guys were up to the challenge as we defeated the tough Willamette squad 9-0.

We are currently en route to Southern CA for a series of weekend matches. Since it is spring break we are heading down early to get in a few days of practice.

More on our adventures later!

What a day!

Apr 182011
 

I have to admit the NWC championship match Sunday was something special. Really a special ending (well almost ending) to a special season. What made the day so memorably was the crowd and unbelievable support from the Whitman community. Let me start by saying I (and the team) feels incredibly fortunate to have our outdoor courts. Yes there are much bigger and fancier courts across the nation. But I have never seen courts with a better location that the Whitman courts. Our courts are right in the center of campus — next to the library, administration building, and the big campus quad called Ankey field. We are very lucky to practice and play in the middle of campus.

Continue reading »

Portland part 2

Feb 222011
 

On President’s day we wrapped up our swing through the Portland area with a 1pm match against Willamette (indoors). After playing a double header on Sunday in extremely cold weather and spending many hours in a bus the team was a bit stiff. However after a good warm-up the Whitties were ready for battle.

In an earlier post I mentioned the effects of graduating 7 seniors. Graduating that many good players could decimate at team. We were lucky to mitigate that effect by having strong player development and a talented freshman class (Andrew La Cava, Steven Roston, Will Husky and Atanas Atanasov). Something positive, however, has happened with the player graduation — the current team has found its own voice. It appears that this year’s team is about energy and passion. Honestly this might be the most vocal and energetic team I have coached. From top to bottom, from those playing to those watching, this team is absolutely committed to each other. I think playing the energized and vocal George Fox team Sunday awoke that voice. Continue reading »

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!

Wrapping up ITA’s

Sep 282010
 

After rain moved the tournament indoors on Saturday it was a treat to be able to play the semi-finals outdoors. The only bad thing about having the last day of the tournament on Monday is there weren’t many tennis spectators around to watch! Since I had sent several players home Sunday with Coach Matt Solomon there were only a handful of Willamette and Whitman players around to watch the matches.

We were fortunate to have three of the four semi-finalist in the singles. Teammates, and doubles partners, Andrew La Cava (#16 seed) and Conor Holton-Burke (#6 seed) duked it while Chris Bailey (#9 seed) faced off against Willamette’s Cody Ferguson (#8 seed).

Day one of ITA Regionals

Sep 262010
 

Just wrapped up day one of the ITA regional tournament. Those that follow college tennis know this is a special event. It is the only time all year that players are put into one singles and one doubles draw. Makes for a very fun event. Our players have been looking forward to this event since the start of the school year.

We brought 11 players and have 8 into the round of 16. Even more impressive is that all 5 of our doubles teams are into the quarter finals! Its too late for a full write up but here are the results.
Matt Tesmond
1st round defeat Justin McClain (George Fox) 6-4, 7-5
2nd round lost #1 seed Mark Magdaong (Linfield) 6-3, 6-4
Conor Holton Burke (#6 seed)
1st round defeated Micah Spaun (Whitworth)
2nd round defeated Troy Zuroske (Pacific) 6-1, 6-4
Quin Miller
1st round defeated Michael Tieu (UPS)
2nd round defeated #4 seed Michael Baumgartner (Willamette) 7-6, 7-5
Anatas Anatasov
1st Round defeated Tim Wagar (Linfield)
2nd round lost #13 Seed Daniel Redfern (Whitworth)
Etienne Moshevich #7 seed
1st round defeated Will Cooper (Willamette)
2nd round defeated Josiah Jackson (George Fox)
Andrew La Cava #16 Seed
1st round def Michell Davidson (Linfield)
2nd round def Neal Berg (PLU)
Sam Sadeghi
1st round def #12 seed Tal Dewitt (Linfield) 6-0, 6-1
2nd round def Eric Furuya (Pacific) 6-1, 6-2
Jeff Tolman #3 seed
1st round def Colin Barett (Whitworth) 6-3, 6-4
2nd round def Taylor Dickey (PLU) 6-3, 6-0
Steve Roston
1st Round def Brian Burger UPS
2nd Round def #15 seed Brent Kingzett (Linfield) 6-2, 7-6
Chris Bailey #9 seed
1st round def Hector Alcayde (Pacific)
2nd Henry Williams (Whitworth) 6-2, 6-0
Will Huskey
1st round def Jose Reque-Martinez (Pacific)
2nd round lost #2 seed Josh Wong (willamette) 6-2, 6-1
Doubles
Huskey/Roston
1st round def Wager/Dewitt (Linfield) 8-6
2nd round def Massey/Wales (Whitworth) 8-6
Holton-Burker/La Cava #5 seed
1st round def Burger/Murphy (UPS) 8-1
2nd round def Hing/Kinghorn (Pacific) 8-1
Miller/Tesmond
1st round def Berg/Gunstone (PLU)
2nd round def #7 seeds Levein/Lyons (Linfield) 9-8
Bailey/Sadeghi
1st round def #4 seed Baumgartner/Houser (Willamette)
2nd round def Brown/McClain (George Fox)
Tolman/Moshevich #2 seed
1st round bye
2nd round def Barrett/Williams (Whitworth)
Play resumes tomorrow 9am at Willamette University

NWC Tournament Champions!

Apr 182010
 

Yes! We finished up an undefeated conference season by winning the NWC team tournament. This is a very important tournament as the winner gets an AQ (automatic qualifying) spot in the NCAA III team tournament (May 14-16).

One of the many things I love about Whitman is the institutional support of athletics. Our program is well funded and we get the opportunity to travel extensively to compete against the best teams in the nation. This is, without a doubt, one of the reasons our players improve and the tennis program continues to improve (also one of the reasons our team chemistry is so unbelievable but that is another story). This season three of our losses have been to teams ranked in the top 10 and the fourth loss was to a team that started the year at #11. In all those matches we were competitive and everyone on the team knows if we play just a little better we can win those matches. I strongly feel that has a team, as a player, and as a coach one doesn’t improve unless they challenge themselves against better opponents. Continue reading »

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.

Split squad yields two victories

Mar 152010
 

One of the benefits of a deep roster is the ability to split the squad into two parts. Yesterday half of the guys traveled with me to take on Willamette while the other half went with Coach Ann to play Lewis and Clark College.

Fortunately for my group the weather was great and we were able to play Willamette on their outdoor courts (often we run into rain and have to travel to indoor courts). Against Willamette we knew we were in for a good match — we defeated them 7-2 on our home courts just seven days ago. In that match the top three singles all went three sets.
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