Sorry for the delay in getting to this post but the past couple days have been a whirlwind. After a long day of travel we are safely back on campus and ready for classes. All the guys on the team should be ready for early classes this week — after a week of trying to set our biologic clocks to east coast time and spending a few days on the east coast everyone should be wide awake early this morning! This past week has given me an appreciation for athletes that constantly travel across time zones and are able to maintain a peak level of performance.
On Sunday we started our match against Mary Washington at 11:30am. I’m sure the extra couple hours of sleep and playing at more “normal” time had something to do with our high level of play. Even though we spent the previous week practicing at 6:30am in hopes of getting a head start on the time change it wasn’t quite the same as being up early to eat breakfast, warm-up and starting matches at 6am (pacific time). On Saturday we started our day at 3:45am pacific time!
I believe during the Mary Washington match I tweeted “the match was awesome” and it was an awesome match. In fact several times Coach Todd Hebling and I would meet between courts and chat about the high level and intensity of the play. This is the type of match I would love to play every week– great play, physical points, outcome in doubt and each player/team making each other better.
Doubles was a close affair up and down the line-up. Fortunately for us at #1 Conor and Matt finally found their groove midway through the pro-set to go up a break and get us on the board first with an 8-6 victory. Even though we lost the #3 match 8-4 it was very close. In fact the first 4 games all went to deuce and both teams had several hold or break points. We were either down 0-4 or 1-3 but could of easily been up by that same margin. At one point Sam/James were down 2 breaks but managed to hold-break and on James service game come back from 0-40 to make it 30-40 (this is a HUGE momentum point). At 30-40 Sam and James played a great point and earned an easy overhead to finish the point. Sam thinks he puts away the overhead and yells out in exuberance. Unfortunately he yelled out too soon and the MWU player made a great get and the official correctly gave the point to the MWU team as a hindrance (think Serena Williams vs Sam Stozer at the US Open). Good lesson to learn bad time to learn it. After that the MWU finished the match 8-4. With the match tied at 1-1 all eyes were on #2 doubles where Jeff and Andrew were up a break. After MWU held to make the score 7-5 Jeff had the task of serving to give us a 2-1 lead. This was the exact same position he was in last year when he served for the match against #9 Trinity. I’m sure that experience helped as Jeff held at 40-15 to give us the lead after the doubles.
In singles MWU evened the score at 2-2 when Conor ran into a buzz saw at #3 losing 6-3, 6-0. Incredible maturity from Conor — immediately following the match he didn’t dwell on his bad poor play (as players most often do) but instead starts to support James who lost his 1st set 1-6. I’m positive that one of the reasons James bounced back (I will get to that in a minute) was the fact that Conor immediately started to feed positive energy onto his court. At this point the match is tied at 2-2 and we are up a set at #5 (Sam) and #6 (Adriel) but down a set at #4 (James) and #2 (Jeff) and at this point #1 (Andrew) is still early in their first set! The first game of Andrew match was an 8 deuce game!
Both Adriel and Sam end up winning in straight sets giving us a 4-2 lead. Jeff is having a wail of a battle at #2. While serving in the 2nd set Jeff has a major left calf cramp that brings the trainer out to the court. Somehow Jeff manages to get through a couple more games to force a tiebreak but drops his match 6-3, 7-6. Match score is now 4-3 with #4 and #1 still on court. At #4 James rallies to win the 2nd set forcing a decisive third set. And at #1 Andrew had won an incredibly close first set. Was pretty amazing watching Andrew and James battle for every point. Andrew and his opponent had a fantastic match and both played amazing tennis. At one point in the match Coach Hebling walked over and said something to the effect that this wasn’t D3 level tennis and he would of paid money to watch the two play. He was absolutely correct in that statement. The MWU player was absolutely pounding the ball (especially his forehand) forcing Andrew to scramble all over the court waiting for his opportunity to go on the offensive. Andrew is amazing athlete and incredibly quick around the court — against MWU I think he surprised even himself with his movement and anticipation. Andrew ended up clinching the match with a gutsy 6-4, 7-5 victory. However the #4 match provided plenty of drama as both players experienced “freshman” moments. MWU won the 1st set 6-1 with a dominating performance. James battled back to win the 2nd 6-3. In the 3rd James was up 4-1 only to have the MWU player win 4 straight games. At that point they traded holds to force a 3rd set tiebreaker. In that tiebreaker James saved several match points to win 8-6. To say the least it was an interesting match. Big thanks to Dylan Bodet who acted as the assistant coach and sat with James the entire match.
Hats off to the Whitties. We have had an incredible couple weeks. The previous weekend we defeated the UC Santa Cruz 6-3 (#6 in the nation) on our home courts and also played matches against conference rival George Fox, DI Montana, and nationally ranked NAIA power LCSC. After that intense weekend, and a well deserved day off, we started practicing in the morning to get ready for our east coast swing. Friday we arrived very late into the Washington DC area and the next morning had to play 2 national caliber teams in Rhodes (#23) and Kalamazoo (not ranked but a national caliber team). We then finished off the trip with an intense physical win over #22 Mary Washington on their home courts (which is no easy task). Well earned boys!!!!
Big thanks to Justin Hayashi who came out from Washington DC to help chauffeur the team around and all the families who made the trek east to support the team — Papa Roston, the Sadeghis, Tesmonds, Renee, Borshanskys, and the Pat Burke clan. We really appreciate the support and food! Also thanks to the Coach Heblin and the MWU team for putting together such a wonderful weekend of tennis.
This weekend we have conference matches against Pacific Lutheran University (Friday) and University of Puget Sound (Saturday)
Whitman 6 Mary Washington University 3
1. Andrew LaCava (WHIT) def. Sam Wichlin (UMW) 6-4, 7-5
2. Evan Charles (UMW) def. Jeff Tolman (WHIT) 6-3, 7-6 (7-2)
3. Alex Blakhin (UMW) def. Conor Holton-Burke (WHIT) 6-3, 6-0
4. James Rivers (WHIT) def. Tyler Carey (UMW) 1-6, 6-3, 7-6 (8-6)
5. Sam Sadeghi (WHIT) def. Will Apperson (UMW) 6-2, 6-1
6. Adriel Borshansky (WHIT) def. Riley Baver (UMW) 6-2, 6-3
Last week the team had the unique opportunity to try our version of man vs food. After the 2nd day of the USTA/ITA we headed out with several parents to the Oasis steakhouse for a late evening dinner. I must admit the staff at the Oasis treated us like kings — amazing food, service and atmosphere.