Rivalry Weekends

Apr. 2

Our past five matches have been against very good teams and our biggest rivals. I think everyone would agree that we’ve seen vast improvements in a number of areas over the past few weeks. Two weekends ago, we ended our multi-year losing streak against Washington & Lee with a very convincing 8-1 victory highlighted by a doubles sweep. The next day we traveled to Baltimore and lost 6-3 to Johns Hopkins. Both coaches thought we were a little flat coming out of the gates so this would lead to a new warm-up routine for our next matches, which has helped a lot.

In college tennis, it is so important to come out strong in doubles with energy and quick feet. This is something that we have struggled with for more than two seasons and we seem to have finally found what we needed the past three matches. Last Friday night, we played a talented Kenyon team which has the defending singles national champion. We were able to get a win at No. 2 doubles to keep us in the match and everyone fought really hard in singles in a 6-3 loss. Bobby MacTaggart played a great match and beat a very good player 6-2, 6-0.

Our next match was against Mary Washington. This is a team that has beaten us easily in the past, so we were really hungry for a win. They came out firing and at one point in doubles they led 5-2 at No. 1, and 6-4 at No. 2 and 3. Fifteen minutes later, we were up 7-5 at No. 1, it was 7-7 at No. 2 and No. 3 won for us 8-6. In my time playing college tennis, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a turnaround like this. We went on to sweep all three doubles matches highlighted by Bobby and me beating a team that was ranked eighth in the country last year. This is the first time since I’ve been in college that we have swept a top 15 team in doubles and I have to commend everyone on their performance. The singles was tough and we ended up with a 3-3 split, giving us a 6-3 win.

Yesterday we played Division I Duquesne University. Our cross-town rival beat us easily last year, but they are struggling with injuries this year so we knew we had a good chance. We decided to play Division I scoring rules, where doubles only counts as one point instead of three. Again our doubles was phenomenal and we took the doubles point easily. I was a little bummed out because my 13-match singles winning streak was broken, but my teammates covered for me and we split singles to win the match 4-3. Ravi Raghavan hasn’t played much this year, so he did a great job closing out his second set to clinch the match. This was a good win for us against a very solid Division I program.

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