Finishing Up

It’s been a good while since the last post, so lots has happened. We went 1-3 in our last four matches, losing to Linfield, Pacific, and Willamette. The  bright spot was an 8-1 win against Lewis and Clark. I should add there were a lot of good performances down the stretch, Peter and Josiah played some great doubles matches at #1 in the last matches of the season and really brought their game up a level to do it. Our match against Willamette was the biggest surprise to me, and best effort of the 2nd half of the season.

Pax's first win @ #4!!!!!!

We came in with our passion buckets full, and had the Bearcats on the ropes before they turned things around in a couple tiebreakers. Me and Nolan won in our doubles team debut, so we had one point going into singles. Nolan also won at #6, Preston beat Michael Baumgartner  at #1 and Peter and Josiah were both up in their matches before being beaten in third sets. In that match I played #2 against Josh Wong. I’m not in favor of cliche’s but it was probably the best thing for my tennis getting beat like I did. He is one of the smartest player I’ve played in college. Lots of long rallies where all of his balls bounced back near the baseline and he’d just wait for a short one to tee off a backhand approach. Or if I got a short ball, I’d come in and he’d just send up a lob, I’d run back, and hit another forehand approach, and we’de do the same dance all over again. Literally he would start to grin during the point, and it wasn’t even a “I’m controlling this you stupid untalented jackwagon” type of grin. It was more a grin that just said “oh boy tennis is fun!” Very nice guy, and definitely gave me some things to work on moving ahead.

Staples 1st win @ #5!!

Overall, our season ended in a tie for fifth with Linfield.We fell just short of our goal of making the conference tourney this year, which was disappointing. I think with the guys that are  here though and the work ethic they have, its gonna be good times in the future. I’ll be graduating, but let’s be honest, that won’t be a huge loss the way I played this year.

Some good news – Four of us are eligible to go to the Ojai Tourney, its kinda like Mecca for tennis on the West Coast. The D-III west regional tournament is there for singles and doubles, as well as the Pac-10 and other open, and  community college tourneys all on the same week. So its a lot of good tennis and an honor to participate it.  Justin and Peter will play doubles and Me and Preston will be in the singles side of things. Right now I’m a little hesitant to go because it means I would be missing graduation, I’ll be making a decision regarding that soon, but…if you wanna vote for one or the other go ahead and leave a comment!

Overall though, it was a very good season with a lot of good steps in the right direction. Had a lot of freshman gain confidence as well as receive a lot of good mental coaching many of us had never experienced myself included. Moving ahead our team will have to get better at doubles, that was always the common theme in losing was that we usually got swept in doubles when we lost matches. If we won just one of the three it usually ended in an team win or we were in a position to win late in the overall match. Thanks for reading! – SB