This weekend is one of my favorite times of the year — the ITA Fall Regionals! This is my favorite college tennis event of the year. It is the only time all the singles players and doubles teams in the conference are put into one large draw. Doesn’t matter if a player is #1 or #10 on a team — everyone has a shot to win the event. I know the Whitman players really look forward to this opportunity. This is the only time that many of them get a shot at the top players from the other teams in the conference.
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Time for some tennis!
Sweep PLU!
I must admit I was worried going into our match with PLU. Don’t get me wrong I always look forward to playing PLU because historically they produce some wonderful matches. Yesterday I worried about how the guys would play after a very tough academic week. The week before spring break (Whitman has a two-week break) is always one of the toughest weeks of the year. This year seemed worse than most: almost everyone on the team was staying up late studying, working on papers and/or preparing for tests. I doubt that anyone on the team had a good night’s sleep all week and I was worried how everyone would respond to the intense academic week.
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Moody Match
This is a very tough post. Besides playing two matches yesterday, we learned that a member of the Whitman community (and good friend to a member of the tennis team) died yesterday in a tragic skiing accident. My thoughts and emotions go out to the Whitman community and family.
Yesterday we had a very long day in the UPS fieldhouse as we took on rival PLU and host UPS. We arrived at the fieldhouse at 10am and didn’t leave until until 7pm! As readers of my blog know I have the greatest respect for the PLU team. They are an experienced team with enough talented players to give most any team trouble. Yesterday they were trouble for us….
While we ended up gutting out a tough 5-4 match I’m not happy with how the match played out and our team attitude. As a team we spend time talking about values — personal values, team values, core values, gratitude and competition. We work on how we want to look (individually and as a team). We have an expectation of how we want to compete on the court. As a group, as a family we know how we should compete in the face of adversity. Frankly we were a moody, angry group on court and it showed in our results. Is it possible to be disappointed in a 5-4 victory that came down to the last match? I believe I speak for our group when I say yes. Hopefully yesterday’s experience will serve to motivate us, inspire us and teach us. I truly believe we have all the tools to be a great team. However if yesterday’s performance and attitude is going to be the norm we are […]
Getting ready for Tacoma
We open our conference play Saturday 10:30am against PLU and immediately follow with UPS. Both matches will be at the UPS indoor tennis courts.
Kind of interesting that we start off our conference schedule against the same team we played in last year’s conference finals — Pacific Lutheran University. In fact, the past six year’s conference finals have been a Whitman vs PLU affair with each team winning three. The past three years we have had a bit of a hot streak against PLU going 8-1 overall and winning the conference title in 2008 and 2009. (more…)
Wrapping up the ITA’s
Sorry for the delay in this post. What a great weekend of play for the Whitties at the Northwest Regional ITA tournament (which we hosted). Not only was the tennis incredible but we able to play under picture perfect blue skies!
On Monday the tournament got underway with the men’s semi-finals. As a team we were fortunate to get three of our players into the precious final four. One semi’s featured senior Matt Solomon vs Linfield’s talented #1 player Mark Magdaong. The other semi was an all-Whitman showdown between junior Chris Bailey and freshman Jeffrey Tolman. I should point out that both Chris and Jeffrey had incredible matches on Sunday. Chris battled past teammate Thomas Roston in a 3-hour 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 match. Not to be outdone Jeffrey pulled off the upset of the tournament when he defeated PLU’s #1 player Joel Trudel 4-6, 6-2, 6-2. Great win for Jeffrey, Joel was NWC player of the year last year (going undefeated in singles) and is DI transfer from U of Idaho.
In the semi’s Matt was locked in a tight 1st set battle with Magdoang. At 4-4 Matt kicked it up a notch winning 8 of the last 9 games posting a 6-4, 6-1 victory. Good win for Matt..Magdoang is one of the most talented players in our conference and was playing some sweet ball at the end of last year. On any given day he has the ability to knock off any DIII player. In the other semi’s Jeffrey and Chris had a slug fest and traded leads several times each set. In the end Jeffrey was able to gut out a 7-6, 7-6 victory over his teammate.
The first set of the finals was incredible. […]
NWC Championships Recap
Sorry about not getting this out yesterday. Weather was too nice to be inside and replacing a spring shackle on my Jeep became a major project that included cutting the frame, modifying brackets, and the removal of auxiliary parts.
This year’s NWC tournament certainly provided us some challenges both on and off the court. Even before our first match we had some funky issues to deal with. Since there are no warm-up courts at the Yakima Tennis Club we went off-site before our matches to get loosened up and hit a few balls. During this warm up Nadeem got hit in the head and broke his glasses. Luckily he was prepared and had an extra pair of glasses in the hotel. Unfortunately the van wouldn’t start! Now we are stuck at a public park with a broken pair of glasses and no way to get back to the hotel or even to the tournament site. Fortunately Coach Ann was driving six guys from Walla Walla that morning so we waited for her to arrive. Once she arrived, Nadeem and I jumped into the van to go back the hotel. However, Jake left his rackets and shoes in the van and didn’t have his equipment to warm-up with. What a crazy morning! In the end we were able to shuttle people to lunch and to the tournament site. Coach Ann had to do the dirty work and find a repair shop, tow-truck and shuttle all while being left with a broken van. For the record Brett Hall Chevelot is Yakima was AWESOME…they towed the van, provided a shuttle for Ann and provided a complimentary Enterprise van.
Because of morning rain the tournament was running a few […]
Whitties finish NWC 16-0!
Yesterday was a great day for the Whitties. In beating rival PLU 7-2 we finished the conference season with an unblemished 16-0 record! This is the third constitutive year we have finished 16-0 in the conference and our 50th consecutive regular season conference victory!
Ending our season against PLU was especially gratifying since they have been one of the best teams in the conference and will go into the conference tournament as the #2 seed. Certainly nice going into the conference tournament as the #1 seed and just beaten the #2 seed 7-2.
We went into the match a bit off-balanced with our doubles. Doubles standout Christoph Fuchs has been sick the past two weeks and he stayed at home to rest and recover. I was also hoping to insert Etienne Moshevich into the doubles line-up but at the last minute decided to scratch him from the line-up. As a coach it can be a bit unsettling having new doubles combos and teams playing in different positions going into a big match. However one of beautiful aspects of our team is our tremendous depth and team spirit. We put about 14 players into the doubles line-up and not miss a beat. This was evident against PLU as Dan Wilson and Justin Hayashi moved up to #1 doubles, Nadeem Kassam and Chris Bailey played #2 and the relatively new team of Jasper Follows and Quin Miller filled in at #3.
Justin and Dan continued their unbelievable season gaining an early break and never looked back winning 8-5 against a very good PLU team. Justin and Dan have been incredible this season. They started the year at #3 doubles and the past few matches have been playing #1 — […]
Recap!
Long post incoming. Sorry for the length of the post but it has been a few days since I’ve been able to provide match recaps.
First off scores from yesterday:
Whitman 9 Westminster 0
Whitman 5 Colby 4
What an unbelievable spring break trip! Two weeks on the road with an amazing group of guys (we are starting our second week). Many people have asked why we are taking a two-week trip. Whitman has a two-week break and traditionally we have taken the 1st week to travel and play matches. This year I decided to schedule most of our away conference matches the first week of break and use the second week to travel to Hilton Head Island.
So far the trip has been a blast. Our team is more a family than a team and we are the best vacation ever! Well its not exactly a vacation since we are playing something like 14 matches during our trip.
Last time I really updated the blog was on Monday after the Pacific and George Fox matches. On Tuesday I took part of the guys to Salem for a conference match against Willamette. Since we had a two hour drive to Salem we left about 10am to ensure we had plenty of warm-up time. Weather was actually perfect in Salem and we got to play the match outdoors. This is quite a rarity in Salem: they have only played two home matches at their outdoor courts in the last two years!
We played Willamette 5 days earlier in Walla Walla so we knew what to expect coming into the match. In our earlier meeting we had close matches at both #1 and #2 doubles (both were 8-6). In this match we came […]
Whitties sweep weekend
On Friday the “Fighting Squirrels” kicked off conference play with a 9-0 victory over University of Puget Sound. The #2 doubles combo of Justin “Hiyo” Hayashi and Dan “Mr ATT” Wilson got us rolling with a quick 8-0 win. We struggled a bit in the other doubles matches but pulled through with a 8-5 win at #1 (ET and Nadeem) and 8-4 at #3 (Jake and Chris).
In singles Mr ATT (aka Dan) played like a man who had to make an important call cruising through a 6-0, 6-0 victory at #3 singles. Not to be outdone Chris Bailey posted a 6-0, 6-0 victory at #1 singles. This victory was especially sweet for Chris since his opponent was a NWC 1st Team All-Conference selection from 2008. In other singles Jake battled through a case of nerves posting a 6-3, 6-3 victory at #2, Quin held on for a 6-0, 6-4 win at #4, Nadeem worked hard for a 6-2, 6-4 win at #5 and Christoph completed the sweep with a 6-1, 6-2 win at #6.
Whitman 9 UPS 0 Match Scores
Saturday morning was the “BIG” morning — a match with our rival PLU. College football has their rivalry weekend the NWC conference has Whitman VS PLU tennis shootout. Make no doubt about it, this was a big match for both teams. A early season victory by either team sets the tone for the rest of the year. Last year we were able to get the Lutes 3 times (6-3, 9-0, 8-1). However this year the Lutes picked-up another DI transfer giving them one of the best #1, #2 tandems in the conference. To make matters worse we lost our #1 and #2 players from last year. […]