Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Sole possession of first place

Yesterday we once again split into two squads. My team traveled to McMinnville to take on Linfield and coach Ann's group traveled to Newberg to play George Fox.

I was looking forwards to the Linfield match because they were off to their best start in school history and, like us, were undefeated in NWC play. This was a pretty big match in the conference..the winner takes over 1st place in the standings and takes a big step towards claiming the conference championship.

In doubles the Linfield #1 team came out smoking! They were bombing serves and ripping returns. Matt and ET quickly went down 0-5. We did manage to break once, but the Linfield team continued their strong play closing out the match 8-3. Jake and Jeff continued their strong play at #3 doubles posting another solid 8-2 victory. After the match in speaking with Jeffrey he thought it was their best effort yet. At #2 doubles Christoph and Quin jumped out to a quick two-break lead. However the Linfield team was very pesky and saved a total of 4 match points before Christoph ended the match on his serve. That put us up 2-1 going into the singles.

What can I say about the singles except wow! As I mentioned yesterday I feel like we are playing better with each match. Yesterday the guys came out firing in singles: great effort, intensity and play. We quickly won the 1st sets in all the matches except Christoph who strained a quad and had to retire after dropping the 1st set 6-4. We are hoping a couple days of rest will do him good and he is able to go by Saturday. Here are the singles scores from yesterday:
#1 Matt won 6-2, 6-2
#2 Jeffrey won 6-3, 6-1
#3 Chris won 6-1, 6-4
#4 ET won 6-1, 6-0
#5 Christoph lost 6-4
#6 Jasper won 6-0, 6-3

Couple notes from the match. ET was able to go in singles and played great tennis. Sitting on the sidelines the past few matches has been too much for this proud warrior. He has been chomping at the bit to get out on the singles court. Chris Bailey had a bit of a strange match. He won the first set 6-1 and then went down 0-4 before ripping off 6 straight games. Match-up of the day was probably #1 singles where Matt defeated Linfield's previously undefeated (in conference play) #1 player.

Our second group of players were in nearby Newberg taking on the Bruins of George Fox. Match of the day was at #1 where Conor dropped a very close 6-4, 2-6, 10-7 match. The #1 player from Fox is a very talented player who earned 2nd team All-Conference honors last year. This year the Fox player has posted some very good conference results. Great effort from Conor.

This morning we are playing doubles against University of Portland. Although this is non-counting it will be great practice for us before we head to California. Later in the day both teams will join up and we play Pacific at 4pm. I'm looking forward to having the entire team back together again!



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