A Stroke of Luck

Apr. 28

It’s been a while since I’ve written and we’ve been through some big ups and downs. Three weeks ago we went to the GLCA tournament in Indiana and we entered as the #2 seed. We got through the first day easily with wins against Hope and Wooster, sweeping the doubles in both. The following day we had to play #3 seed DePauw on their home courts. We came out firing in doubles and took #2 and #3 easily. Bobby and I were in a battle at #1 and ending up losing 8-6 to a very good team. We thought we were in a great position to win though because DePauw prides themselves on doubles. About three hours later, we lost 5-4 and it was a real shock for us. James lost to a guy who he crushed the year before, I lost my first Division III match of the season and Jeremy lost a match where he was up a set and a break. I’m still not sure how this ended up happening but we were really down on ourselves. We beat Kalamazoo 5-2 to take 3rd place but we knew our NCAA chances didn’t look good after the morning loss.

We had a lax week of practice and everyone still wasn’t recovered from the DePauw loss. We headed to UAA’s in Rochester as the #3 seed. We had an opening-round win against NYU and prepared for Wash U, which currently stands at #1 in the nation. Although Wash U beat us 8-1, we thought we played a pretty good match and four of the losses were competitive. I have to commend Wash U on their play as well as their sportsmanship. They are a great team and win with a lot of class. We had to play a very fiery Chicago team for 3rd place. They are very loud and really intense. Again we were able to take two of the three doubles matches and put ourselves in control of the match. Yiran, Alex and I ran through our singles matches and an hour later the match was clinched for us with a 5-1 score. Ravi and Bobby pulled out their matches and James fell against a tough player at #1 to give us a 7-2 win against a top 20 program. Yiran and I were awarded All-UAA First Team honors. This is the second time both of us have received this honor.

After the tough loss to DePauw, we knew we’d need a lot of help to get a bid to NCAAs. We received a nice push toward the at-large bid on Sunday when DePauw beat Trinity (TX) in the finals of their conference tournament. We owe a big thank you to the team which originally took us out of contention. We will now go back to practicing after taking it easy for the last two weeks. We won’t know our true NCAA fate until early next week, but it’s looking good for us right now.

Looking back on the season, I think it’s been full of positives. Our team chemistry is nothing short of phenomenal. Everyone is best friends with everyone else and we all really get along on trips. It’s been a lot of fun and we just hope we get to play together a little longer with a trip to the postseason!

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