Whitman College Tennis

Goodbye to blogspot

2011-11-17T08:50:00.001-08:00

This will be the last post to whitmantennis.blogspot.com.

Never fear I'm going to continue to blog at my new site

www.whitmantennis.net

Why move? Nothing like a new project over the winter but honestly Wordpress has more features and allows for far greater control over content and layout. I've moved all the old content over to the new blog and am currently working through all the old posts tagging and adding categories.

Make sure to subscribe to the new blog so you are informed when new content is added.

Goodbye dear old blogspot!

Photos from 2009 spring break

2011-11-15T21:57:00.001-08:00

Was going through my computer files and ran across these pictures from our 2009 trip to Hilton-Head. Certainly a blast from the past. Enjoy!

2009 Pictures

An evening with the sleep doctor

2011-11-10T19:33:00.001-08:00

The team had a wonderful dinner with Dr. Richard Simon last night in the Reid Campus Center. Dr. Simon is a '72 graduate of Whitman (and varsity tennis player) who is now one of the leading sleeping researchers in the nation. Dr Simon made the point of telling the team that if you see someone who is truly great make sure to follow them. Sage words from the sleep doctor.

Was a great experience for the team to be able to sit down with Dr Simon and talk about sleep, sleep issues, and ask questions. Dr Simon had some really fascinating information on sleep. For instance about 8 years ago Whitman student Jenny Schwartz conducted a study with the Whitman women's tennis players that focused on their serve and sleep. Basically she tracked 2nd serve percentage to a specific target with the student's normal sleep patterns and repeated the experiment with 2 more hours. Not surprising there was a statistically significant improvement with the 2 hours extra sleep. That experiment has since been repeated with Stanford varsity basketball players with similar results (free throws). One interesting fact that Dr Simon presented to the team was varsity athletes typically get 1 more hour of sleep than students not involved in athletics -- 7 hours vs 6 hours. However the 7 hours is still well below the 9 hours most college age students need.

We also spent quite a bit of time talking about resetting one's "rhythm" to adjust to time zone changes. This year we will be spending time in Hawaii and Washington DC so the information presented is very pertinent to our situation. Dr Simon stressed it was the wake up time that adjusts one sleep clock. He suggested when traveling to an Eastern time zone to start getting up 1/2 hour earlier and immediately getting full spectrum light (sunlight) a few weeks before the date of travel.

Of particular interest was the topic of naps. Basically sleep is good and if done properly naps can make a person more alert and reduce "sleep debt". It was suggested that if one has an important task (like a test) in the afternoon or evening a good strategy would be to drink a cup of coffee and then take a 20 minute nap. However be careful not to nap too long and then potentially wake up from stage 3 sleep. Waking up from stage 3 sleep can cause "sleep drunkenness" and heavy lethargy.

Also for the parents out there -- it is completely natural for teenagers to have a sleep cycle of staying up late and sleeping-in the morning. It appears that humans are wired to have different sleep patterns at different ages.

Question for those that stayed away through this article -- how can you tell if you are getting enough sleep? Answer -- if you don't need an alarm clock to wake up.

Big thanks to Dr Simon for taking the time to have dinner with the tennis team.

Calling All Alumni

2011-10-31T14:22:00.000-07:00

I can't tell you how excited I am that the Vegas reunion is less than a week away! I am looking forward to catching up with everyone during a fun weekend. Since we are all getting in at different times (even different days, for some people), let's plan on meeting at 9PM Friday evening in the lobby of the Mirage. If anyone gets in later, please call me on my cell phone and I will tell you where to meet us. If you don't have my cell number email me this week.

Going to be an amazing weekend and I'm looking forward to catching up with everyone!

Pumpkin Carving!

2011-10-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

One of our annual team traditions is an evening of pumpkin carving. This tradition has become quite serious for the guys and they all strive to win the two prizes -- the Ben and Anna 1st place award. Several years ago I started asking my children which of the Jack-o-Lanterns they like most. This year the awards go to Matt's Harry Potter logo (Ben's pick) and Colton/James for their Kirby creation (Anna's Pick).

This year was a bit unique as the carving competition was during family weekend. Many of the parents came over for dinner (dutch oven chili and corn bread, smoked chicken and pork) and to watch the competition.

Here is a link to pictures from the evening.

Day 2 and 3 of the ITA's

2011-10-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

Today is the end of day 3 of the ITA's. Yesterday Andrew had a struggle against the elements and #1 ranked Dillon Pottish of Emory. Andrew was disappointed that he lost to the #1 player in the nation 6-2, 6-2. It was a rough loss for Andrew as the high humidity and tough opponent were too much for him to handle. At the end of the match I was worried how Andrew was dealing with the heat and humidity and if he would be able to continue with the tournament. After a day in the hotel and lots and lots of water, Andrew was feeling like his normal self.

Today Andrew had a 8:30am match against #4 seed Amrik Donkena of Gustavus Adolphus College. Turned out to be a very streaky match. In the 1st set Andrew was up 5-4 serving only to lose 3 straight games and drop the 1st set 7-5. The second set was even up to about 3-3 when Andrew picked up his level of play reeling off 7 straight games to go up 5-7, 6-3, 4-0. Down 0-4 Donkena was ready to give up the match and made a major change in tactics (slicing most every ball) and clawed his way back into the set at 3-4 (Andrew up a break). Serving at 4-3 Andrew totally stepped up the plate to easily hold serve and break to win the match.

Tomorrow Andrew plays the #3 seed Joey Fritz of Amherst. Like Andrew, Fritz is a talented sophomore. I believe in his last year of junior tennis Fritz was ranked as high as #19 in the nation! He might be the highest ranked player ever to play DIII. Kind of interesting fact about the tournament -- because of the play-in match and the draw placement, Andrew will have played 4 of the top 5 players in the tournament. Talk about some tough matches!

As usual someone (thanks Conor) will be twittering the scores.

Day 1 at the USTA/ITA National Championships

2011-10-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

Today was play-in day at the 2011 USTA/ITA National Championships in Mobile, AL. These championships have evolved to where the winners of the PNW and Texas regional tournaments arrive a day early for a one match play-in. Win that match and you are guaranteed three more matches. Lose and you are out of the tournament. Its not a perfect system but financially much better than the old format where the regional tournament alternated between Texas and PNW.

Since the separation of the PNW/Texas tournaments (6 years ago) it has been a Whitman vs Trinity affair in singles. I believe in doubles it has been Whitman and Trinity 4 of the past 6 years. Because of this history both teams/players are well acquainted with the play-in system.

In the singles play-in match sophomore Andrew La Cava had the tough task of playing the #4 player in the nation in Trinity senior Max Frey. At the end of last year he was one of the hottest players in the nation advancing to the semis in the NCAA individual tournament.

Today Andrew played a brilliant match to knock off the Trinity player 6-3, 6-1. Funny how tennis works. A few weeks ago Andrew wasn't sure if he was even going to play in the regional tournament because of shoulder tendinitis. Because of a sore shoulder he hasn't been able to serve big and play his typical attacking serve and volley game. The past few weeks he has adapted to playing much more patient from the baseline and picking his spots to be aggressive. Today he focused on getting a high percentage of 1st serves in play and rolling the ball deep to neutralize Frey's huge game (he has a monster serve and forehand). Andrew executed his game plan perfectly and played his way into the final grouping. An odd part about the tournament is the ITA committee had to produce 2 different draws because of the play-in match system. If Frey would have won he would have been the #2 seed in the main draw. Instead Andrew now goes into the draw and now plays the #1 seed Dillon Pottish of Emory. Basically Andrew has to play the #2 and #1 seeds in the tournament on back-to-back days!

Unfortunately doubles didn't go as well. Senior Conor Holton-Burke and junior Matt Tesmond took on Frey and his partner. The Trinity combo is very experienced having played together all last season and part of the 2009 season. The Trinity team played incredibly solid tennis making most every return, forcing Conor and Matt into difficult situations. In the 1st set the Trinity team broke the 1st game of the set and never looked back winning 6-2. Early in the 2nd set it looked like the Trinity team would run away with the match as they broke to open the set. At 0-2 down the Whitties started to find their grove winning 3 straight games to go up 3-2 (on serve). The experience of the Trinity team showed as they didn't get rattled by Conor/Matt's improved play and they reeled off 4 straight games to take the match 6-2, 6-3.

Tomorrow Andrew plays at 10:30am. I will try to keep a Twitter feed going with live scores.

Here is a link to some pictures (updating tonight)

Team Squirrel tries out for the team.

2011-10-11T15:24:00.000-07:00

Some video footage of Team Squirrel trying to make the Whitman tennis team.

Stay tuned for more adventurers of Team Squirrel!

On the road

2011-10-11T08:10:00.001-07:00

Talk about great timing -- Whitman's Oct break is the same week as the ITA Small College National Championships. This not only means the players traveling don't miss a week of school but also that we can leave a bit early to prepare for the upcoming tournament. Yesterday (Monday) we left Seattle in the afternoon and flew into New Orleans in the late evening. Even with a 90 minute flight delay we made into New Orleans before midnight. This morning we woke up to adjust to the time change and will be hitting the road for the drive to Mobile.

The ITA Tournament starts on Wednesday for the champions of the PNW and Texas regionals. Andrew has a play-in match against the #4 player in the nation Max Frey of Trinity. After that match Conor and Matt take on Frey and his partner. Going to be a tough set of matches as the Trinity players are very good. Its kind of strange but for each of the past 6 years it has been a Whitman/Trinity match at the ITA play in (5 of 6 years in doubles). After playing Trinity last spring and matching up at the ITA national tournament during the fall both teams are used to seeing each other across the net.

I will try to provide Twitter updates during the matches tomorrow.

Big thanks to the La Cava family for their hospitality during our hold over in Seattle.

A Camping We Shall Go..

2011-10-06T15:48:00.000-07:00

It is that time of the year for one of the team's more valued traditions -- our annual camping trip. I started this event a few years ago to share my love of the outdoors with my team. In doing so, everyone on the team has realized what a great opportunity the trip is get to know each other and hang out without the distractions of cell phones, computers, TV, etc.

In past years we have gone on a decent backpacking trip into a wilderness area for our overnight. This year everyone was so pressed for time we decided a car camping trip would be the way to go. I'm pretty familiar with the Blue Mountains outside of Walla Walla and thought Mottet campground would be an ideal spot. Its only about an hour drive (probably only 20 miles as the crow flies) from campus, pretty easy to get to, had running water, and would probably be empty.

We arrived at the campground about 2pm Saturday and sure enough the campground was basically empty and we our choice of places to throw our tents. Once the tents were set up the guys hiked down the rough fork trail to the head waters of the South Fork of the Walla Walla. It's about 4 miles hike (each way) into a pretty steep canyon. While the team was hiking my daughter Anna (8 years old) and myself set up our camp and started cooking dinner. For dinner I prepared a think, hearty, three bean chili in my large dutch oven. After 3 hours of simmering in the cast iron dinner I used a smaller dutch oven to make fresh corn bread. Honestly the chili and cornbread turned out better than I could have hoped -- actually I'm always a bit surprised when I cook something that turns out well!

The chili was a perfect choice for dinner as the temp. really dropped and it got a bit chilly once the sun went down. Certainly the coldest evening I have had in a while and I would venture it dropped into the high 30's that night.

Once the chili was all but destroyed (I'm always surprised by how much college guys can eat) it was time for S'mores! Nothing like a hot fire roasted marshmallow and chocolate to wrap up a dinner. My daughter was heaven - not only was she camping with dad, hanging with the tennis team (2 of her favorite things to do) but she got to stuff herself with S'mores! After chatting around the fire for a couple hours everyone turned in about 9pm.

In the morning I fired up coals to make dutch oven for a breakfast that included 36 eggs, sausage, bacon, ham, potatoes, green onions, onions and mushrooms -- I actually used 2 ovens to make one breakfast without pork. Unfortunately we couldn't stay around the camp for too long since people had to return to campus and the reality of being a student.

Pictures of the trip can be found on my flickr page.

Team vs Food

2011-10-02T20:46:00.000-07:00

Last week the team had the unique opportunity to try our version of man vs food. After the 2nd day of the USTA/ITA we headed out with several parents to the Oasis steakhouse for a late evening dinner. I must admit the staff at the Oasis treated us like kings -- amazing food, service and atmosphere.

The Oasis has an interesting challenge -- eat their 72 ounce steak, potato, and veggies and the meal is free. Plus you get your picture added to the Wall of Fame. We should of known the challenge was nearly impossible as only 1 person has EVER completed the challenge! Not to be deterred a few brave Whitties tried the 72 ounce challenge. No one really came close to finishing the steak but they gave it the old college try.

I have to say in all my years coaching college tennis this has to be the most unique and interesting team dinner I have EVER seen! Here is the link to the pictures.

Papa Roston thanks for the amazing dinner!

USTA/ITA Wrap up

2011-09-29T07:41:00.000-07:00

Two Whitman College tennis heavyweights, Andrew La Cava andConor Holton-Burke, went toe to toe for what seemed like 15 rounds in Monday's singles final of the USTA/ITA Pacific Northwest Fall Championships on Whitman's outdoor courts.

Andrew La Cava

Conor Holton-Burke

Both players were still standing at the end of three-hour title bout, even though both had landed and absorbed any number of feathery jabs and hard right hands.

Once the final bell sounded and the score cards were totaled, it was La Cava leaving the ring with an epic 7-5, 4-6, 7-6 (9-7) split-decision triumph.

Few points came easy in the slugfest, but La Cava needed one last remarkable flurry of punches to claim his crown.

After holding serve to even the third set at 6-6, La Cava quickly found himself on the wrong end of 5-1 and 6-2 counts in the tie-breaker.

But the crafty sophomore fought off four match points to the square the breaker at 6-6 and then added a fifth straight point to lead 7-6 and earn a match point of his own.

Holton-Burke, a rangy senior and the defending Northwest Conference (NWC) Player of the Year, picked off the next point to send the match back to deuce, only to see La Cava finish the marathon with the next two points.

In winning the regional singles title for a second straight year, La Cava used a service break to break free from a 5-5 deadlock in the first set. He then held serve to take the set at 7-5.

Holton-Burke bounced back to pocket a back-and-forth second set, breaking La Cava at 5-4 to win 6-4.

The deciding third set stayed on serve until La Cava broke Holton-Burke for a 5-4 lead. Holton-Burke broke right back, and both players held serve one more time to reach a 6-6 stalemate and set the stage for the climactic tie-breaker.

But the day was far from over for the two players. After a 90 min break both players returned with their partners for the doubles finals. If the singles final was epic I honestly don't know what to call the doubles final. This match also went the distance with Conor and Matt Tesmond winning 7-6 (12-10). Because of the length of the singles semi and finals this match started at 6pm and finished at 8pm under the lights. The match was so intense and the quality of play so high people started coming out of the library to watch the final set!

Again here is Dave Holden's words about the doubles:

It took two hours for the doubles dust to settle, but Holton-Burke and doubles partner Matt Tesmond finally donned the doubles crown with a 6-3, 2-6, 7-6 (12-10) victory over La Cava and his partner, Jeff Tolman.

The third set in particular was a sight to behold as neither side was able to break serve on the other, although they certainly gave it the good ol' college try.

With the third set even at two games apiece, Holton-Burke held serve on a game that needed two dozen points to decide.

Later in the third, with Holton-Burke and Tesmond leading 6-5, La Cava found a way to hold serve as he and Tolman staved off a match point to get the game back to deuce.

A few points later, La Cava reached into his bag of tricks for a semi-miraculous return to even the set at 6-6 and send the match to a first-to-seven tie-breaker.

While La Cava's match-extending return was a thing of beauty, it seemed to set the standard for a tie-breaker that featured more than just a few eye-popping returns.

After Tolman and La Cava jumped in front 4-3 in the breaker, Tesmond and Holton-Burke responded with three straight points to earn another match point at 6-4.

But the pendulum continued to swing and Tolman's stellar return made it 6-all. From there, the two sides swapped four more match points as the score deadlocked on points seven, eight, nine and 10.

The tie at ten proved to be last, however, as Holton-Burke and Tesmond strung together the next two points to claim the trophy.

Absolutely an amazing day of tennis. Funny emotions with the matches. While the tennis was electrify I was a bit depressed/sad at the end of the day that someone had to lose. The matches were of such a high quality and the matches so physical that it was a shame all couldn't share the winner's spotlight.

Day 2 of the USTA/ITA's

2011-09-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

*Disclaimer - the posts, stories, videos, pictures, themes, links, electronic media and other forms of communication contained within this blog do not represent the views of Whitman College or the Whitman College Administration. This blog is not hosted nor stored on any college server*

Tennis fans sorry about the disclaimer but I have been advised to put some sort of disclaimer at the start of posts. Perhaps more on this later but for the moment suffice it to say that I have been asked to censor all my publications (including electronic).

It is actually day 3 of the USTA/ITA but once again a late evening (more on this later) prevented me from doing a write up of yesterday's action. We entered day 2 of the tournament with 10 players into the round of 16. We had some tough match ups but managed to get 7 into the round of 8. Steven Roston had one of the best wins of the day defeating #4 seed and last year's single finalist Cody Ferguson. One of the more entertaining (and draining matches) was Adriel Borshansky vs James Rivers. These two had an amazing 2.5 hour match with James ended up getting the better of his teammate 7-5, 7-5. Other all Whitman match up's included Sam Sadeghi taking out Will Huskey and Steven Roston. Andrew La Cava took out freshman Colton Malesovas and Jeff Tolman took out James Rivers.

Match of the day was Conor vs George Fox transfer Shawn Aldrich. Its a blast playing the Fox guys they are always incredibly fired up. From our point of view its awesome to be playing such a team -- it makes us better team/players and prepares us when we play on the road. It took Conor 3 sets be he showed a lot of maturity winning 6-1, 1-6, 6-3.

We also had great luck in the doubles. We managed to get 5 of the final 8 spots. Unfortunately for Will/Adriel they had to play #1 seeds Jeff/Andrew in the round of 8. Will/Adriel lost 8-3 but played great and both had a wonderful tournament. Conor and Matt took down the #1 team from Linfield (and #7 seeds) 8-3. Meanwhile James/Sam and Colton/Steven took out the only remaining non-Whitman teams (both from George Fox). In the semi-finals Jeff/Andrew got the better of Sam/James and Matt/Conor defeated Colton/Steven.

Singles semifinals are just about to get underway -- Jeff vs Conor and Sam vs Andrew. I will try to provide a twitter stream.

Sorry for typos or grammar errors in this post -- with matches starting I don't have time to do a proof.

Day 1 of the USTA/ITA

2011-09-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

Man what a great first day of the USTA/ITA Regional Tournament. Unfortunately its getting late and I had a very early day setting up for the tournament. It is certainly a blast for the guys to be playing at home (especially on a day when the temp hit 90) but it makes for a long day for the tournament director!

Let me say it today was a wonderful start to the season for the Whitties. We had 12 players in entered in the singles day and we managed to get 10 through to the round of 16. Nasko dropped a tough match to a seeded player in the first round but he had some moments of great tennis -- in fact he had several opportunities to take a 3-0 lead in the second and couldn't quite get it done. Transfer Dylan Bodet had a great day of tennis playing well and bombing some serves. He won his first match in straight sets before dropping a close three set match to a seeded player.

Some highlights from the day.

Sophomores Will Huskey and Steve Roston showed great character and intensity taking down seeded players. Will knocked off the #7 seed 6-1, 4-6 10-7 and Steven knocked off the #13 seed and #2 player from Pacific 7-5, 6-4. Andrew La Cava (#2 seed) rolled through his first two matches 6-1, 6-0 and 6-0, 6-0
The Freshman came up big today! James Rivers took down the #3 seed 6-1, 6-0 and Colton Malesovas defeated the #8 seed 6-3, 6-2
Not to be outdone the Juniors also posted a strong day. Jeff Tolman #6 seed advanced with a pair of straight set wins (6-2, 7-6 and 6-0, 6-3). Sam Sadeghi (#13 seed) rolled to a pair of straight set wins and Matt Tesmond knocked off the #5 seed 10-8 in a 3rd set match breaker.
The two seniors also advanced to the second day -- #1 seed Conor Holton Burke won 6-0, 6-0 and 6-2, 6-1 and Adriel Borshansky won 6-1, 6-2, and 6-3, 6-1

In doubles everything went our way. We have the #1 seeds Jeff Tolman/Andrew La Cava who only dropped 2 games in 2 matches. And #2 seeds Conor Holton-Burke/Matt Tesmond won 8-5 and 8-1.

Colton and Steven continued their strong play winning 2 matches including defeating the #3 seeds 8-4. Adriel and Will took down the #5 seeds in the 1st round 8-4 and then won their second match 8-3. Sam and James completed a wonderful evening taking down the #4 seeds 8-2 and then coming back from 1-4 down to win their second match 8-4. Great doubles for the Whitties -- we took down the #3, #4 and #5 seeds and placed 5 teams into the round of 8. Our only loss was Nasko and Dylan and dropped a close 8-6 match to the #7 seeds.

Tomorrow matches start at 10am with the main draw on the outdoor courts and the backdraw on the indoor courts.

Remember my friends fun and go nuts!

Singles Draw

Doubles Draw

PS Sorry about not returning text messages and stopping the twitter feed..my phone battery died!

Team Squirrel gets ready for the ITA/USTA Tournament

2011-09-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

Last night I had an interesting talk with "team squirrel" about playing on the team and the ITA Regional tournament. After our interview I'm really excited about the possibility of "team squirrel" joining the team.

ITA/USTA Regional Tourmament Draws

2011-09-22T07:29:00.000-07:00

Whitman is hosting the 2011 ITA/USTA regional championships this weekend. This is a such a wonderful event and opportunity for the players. Outside of the NCAA individual championships its the only event where everyone, regardless of team position, is put into one draw. Below are links are to the tournament draws.

More to come..

Singles

Doubles

Updated career matches

2011-09-09T07:35:00.000-07:00

Hello Whitman tennis fans. I updated the Whitman career match statistics (since 1995) spreadsheet. Probably more interest for the alumni than parents or friends. Still kind of fun to look at. The link is posted on the right side of the blog.

Career matches

At the top of that sheet are links to different sorting options.

Interesting conditioning program for the team this afternoon -- 5 mile mountain hike (2.5 miles up and down) with 1500 elevation change. Will be interesting to see how quickly the guys can finish the "Blue Mountain Challenge"

Blackberry Picking Trip

2011-09-06T09:18:00.000-07:00

Out looking for berries

In my last post I mentioned the importance of getting off the Whitman campus and exploring the surrounding area(s). Besides being historically important (at one time Walla Walla was the capital for the Northwest Territories) the Walla Walla area is full of incredible outdoor opportunities.

*As a side note to learn more about the wilderness areas around SE Washington/NE Oregon visit Grant Ritchie's (a Whitman alum and dear friend) webpage hikeandfishing. *

Prof Hutch

Sunday provided a perfect opportunity for exploration and team bonding as we joined the women's team for some blackberry picking and a dutch oven dinner at Professor Hutchinson's spread on the South Fork of the Walla Walla. Besides being an incredibly popular Whitman professor, Hutch is also a huge fan of Whitman athletics. He routinely shows up at a number of athletic competitions. Funny story -- last year he was kicked out of a men's basketball game!

The new Texas boys!

Turned out to be a great time for blackberries. We have had an unusually cool summer so the blackberries are ripening a bit late. Luckily everyone was able to find plenty of berries to fill bellies (seems more berries go bramble-to-belly than bramble-to-bucket) and to provide fruit for dessert.

Dutch Oven Dinner

While the men and women were out collecting berries and exploring the river, I got the dutch ovens ready for the dinner. I'm the first to admit that I'm a dutch oven rookie but I enjoy the experience of cooking outdoors over a fire. Honestly I was nervous about cooking for both teams. Besides preparing a new recipe I was also cooking for the women's team. Over the years I've learned that guys get hungry in college and are grateful for any meal I cook. They, in turn, have learned to heap praise on my cooking so I keep cooking for the them. Not sure if this is an example of a symbiotic relationship or a positive feedback loop, but it seems to work well. However I wasn't sure how the women would react to my cooking. I used this chicken paad thai recipe as a start for my dinner. By the way I don't know the author of the "Back Porch Gourmet" Blog but he has some great outdoor cooking recipes and ideas. For the dinner I used two ovens -- one for chicken and one for a veggie version. Dinner must of been good because everyone went back for seconds! In fact the huge dutch oven with the chicken paad thai was gobbled up pretty quickly.

Wow what a dessert!

As dinner was wrapping up Coach John prepared Hutch's dutch ovens for dessert -- fresh blackberry & apple cobbler. Check out the picture of his amazing dessert! Throw in some vanilla ice cream, friends and roaring fire for one heck of a memorable evening.

Here is a link to photos from the evening.

At The County Fair

2011-09-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

At the county Fair

Sorry, this should have been posted sooner but its been a busy couple of days. Besides the normal meetings, classes and appointments that usher in the start of the school year, a dead battery in my 1985 Jeep turned into a long few days of testing the alternator, replacing electrical lines, and for the heck of it replacing the power steering pump. On top of all this Saturday afternoon was the 23rd annual draft for my fantasy football league. And yes - our league has been at is so long that when we started there was no internet and we all anxiously waited for the Monday morning newspaper for player stats!

Heading up the grandstands

As a coach one thing I try to do with my team is get off campus to see the surrounding area(s). It would be a shame to spend the first week of college only spending time in the library, dorm room and courts. Besides, Walla Walla is fun to explore and, in fact, was recently named the friendliest town in the United States! And at the beginning of September there is no more interesting place to explore than the oldest fair in the state of Washington -- the Walla Walla Fair & Frontier Days!

Plus I wanted to give the guys on the team a very special experience -- a huge demo derby! The Walla Walla fair demo derby is one serious event. Its 3+ hours of speed, smashing and collisions in front of 4K yelling fans. Throw in some delicious (and very unhealthy) fair food, a beautiful evening and good friends for a very fun and very interesting evening.

flipped car at the derby

The first part of the demo derby is a series of heat races around the dirt track. Even though these heats are lap races there is plenty of bumping, crashing and broken down cars. In fact, this unlucky driver got pushed on his side and the fire trucks had to come out to make sure all was ok. Sam Sadeghi wasn't that impressed with the heat races and said driving in rush hour LA was a "bit like the demo derby except you don't get to go that fast."

Crazy time at the Demo Derby

The end of the derby is a the-last-car-moving- wins race. All the cars line up around the arena and at the starting signal drivers try to a) disable other cars and b) try not to get disabled. Its a lot of loud cars, parts/tires falling off, crashes, and screaming fans. In this photo you can see unlucky car #19 getting pushed over the concrete barrier! Probably not a redeeming social value in attending the demo derby but I have to say everyone had a smashing good time.

Click here for more photos of the fair/demo derby

Beginning of the school year

2011-08-31T20:04:00.000-07:00

Whitman is official off and running! Classes started yesterday but many members of the team been on campus for several days getting moved into dorm rooms/apartments/fraternities. Since most everyone back on campus it was time for an opening week dinner at coaches house!

Let me say I got a HUGE beef brisket from the market for the dinner -- dang thing was so large I had to cut it in half to fit it into the smoker! To go along with dinner I went to farmers market for a couple ripe watermelons, fresh green beans (I figured the mom's would be happy to know their sons were eating a veggie). To finish off the night I made dutch oven blueberry cake! I'm certainly not a dutch oven pro but I must say the cake was unbelievably moist and yummy.

Unfortunately I was so busy cooking and serving that I didn't have time to snap many photos. What I did take can found here.

Looking forward to more opening week activities with the team.

Tennis Alumni Reunion

2011-06-23T19:18:00.000-07:00

Calling all tennis alumni -- the 2011 Whitman Tennis Reunion is ago for Nov 4-6 in Las Vegas! I've had great verbal response to the event and a group of dedicated alumni are working on putting the event together. All tennis alumni will be receiving something via email and/or mail about the reunion.

It was pointed out to me that Southwest currently has great deals into Vegas from the Pacific Northwest airports ($80 each way). Might want to jump on this deal before it ends!

Uncorking a Great Time in Walla Walla

2011-06-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

Enough of the tennis camps for junior players -- here is a very special tennis camp for the parents! July 21-24 we are hosting a tennis/wine tasting/gourmet food event at Whitman. Camp consists of morning tennis instruction, afternoon private wine tastings, and evening dinners with with winemakers.

If you haven't been to Walla Walla recently (or at all) you are missing a real treat. Home to over 120 wineries Walla Walla has been called one of the wine capitals of the United States. Along with the wineries there are a plethora of great restaurants in the area. Walla Walla is now one of the top vacation destinations for wine enthusiasts. Talk about a perfect pairing -- tennis at Whitman and Wine Drinking in Walla Walla. Also the profits from this event go to the Whitman tennis programs.

Joining me running this camp is our women's coach John Hein. John is an incredible coach and brings a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm to the courts. And speaking of enthusiasm Coach Greg Patton of Boise State will be helping direct the camp. We are very lucky to have Greg joining us at event. He is one of the top coaches in the nation and brings unparalleled energy to the courts. He is the only person in college tennis to be named College Coach of the Year with two different teams (UC Irvine and Boise State) and he was the US Junior Davis Cup coach to Sampras, Courier, Chang, Wheaton (among others) when they were cutting their teeth on the professional ranks.

Here is a link to the camp flyer. If you know someone who loves tennis and wine make sure they get a copy of the flyer!

If you have any questions please email me at coach@whitman.edu

End of the year rafting/camping trip

2011-05-25T06:57:00.000-07:00

Talk about a whirlwind week! After returning from St. Louis there was only a day left in the final exam period so many players were busy taking exams and wrapping up the school year. The period between the end of finals and graduation is nicknamed "Camp Whitman" because the campus is alive with activity but no classes/homework/tests. Just a few days of hanging out with good friends before the summer. I decided to take "Camp Whitman" a step further and took members of both tennis teams on an overnight rafting trip down the Wallowa and Grande Ronde Rivers.

Big thanks to Minam Raft Rentals for providing us the rafts. As usual their service was awesome -- we showed up at their shop Thursday afternoon and the rafts were waiting for us to load. Let me say the Grande Ronde river was running hard which created some issues (more on this later). A couple weeks ago the river was running was at 5.5k CFS (cubic feet per second) but during our trip the river was almost 13k! In fact the towns of Elgin and Troy were experiencing some minor flooding.

We had a great float Thursday. Weather was near 70 and the high water flow created some fun rapids. About 6pm it was time to get off the water and set up camp. With the high water flows it takes some planning and hard rowing to beach a raft. I along with two other rafts managed to pull out at one of the best camp spots in the canyon section. However one raft (ET, Steven, and Jake) wasn't paying attention and overshot the take out. Since there is no going upstream we reloaded and chased the wayward boaters down the river. Once we all grouped up I talked about the importance of proper planning and rowing to get the rafts ashore in the high water. Once again I took the lead to scout for good camp spots. At another wonderful looking spot I and two boats pulled off only to see the ET/Jake/Steven raft miss the take out! Let's just say it took a total of four take out attempts (and a new rower in the ET/Jake/Steven raft) before we managed to get everyone ashore.

Even though our take out was later than originally planned we managed to have a wonderful meal of steak and chicken fajitas, dutch oven rice and a special pot of dutch oven beans. Was quite the evening of cooking -- I had two two-burner stoves and two dutch ovens cooking at the same time!

With the sound of rushing water outside the tents most everyone had a great night sleep (Jake and ET didn't bring sleeping bags so their sleep wasn't so great). Friday was pretty uneventful: two dutch oven breakfast meals, pack up camp, load up rafts and float the final stretch to our final take out.

Certainly a fun way to wrap up the year. Here is a link to pictures from the trip.

Season Ends in ST Louis

2011-05-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

All good things must come to end and unfortunately for us it ended a bit too early. On Saturday we were defeated by a very competitive UW - Whitewater team 5-2. We knew going into the match we were going to have a tough match. Unfortunately the match was a bit too competitive and the Whitewater team took an early lead and never looked back.

Over the weekend the weather in St Louis was cold and rainy forcing indoor play. Even though we have plenty of experience playing indoors, I think the move was more a benefit to the big serving Whitewater team. In doubles they were able to control the momentum of the matches with big serves and returns. At #1 doubles Andrew/Conor lost to one of the top teams in the central region 8-5. As a side note the Whitewater duo will be playing in the NCAA doubles championship next week. At #2 doubles ET/Jeff played their usual solid doubles to tie the match at 1-1. At #3 doubles we were broke in the 3rd game of the match and the Whitewater team served their way to an 8-6 win (they were never broken).

Going into singles we were down 1-2 but still full of confidence. The previous weekend we were down 1-2 against LCSC and managed to come back and win 5 of the singles.

In singles we had a great team battle. Early on each team raced out to a lead in 3 of the singles. Whitewater won the 1st sets at #1, #4, and #5 while we won the 1st set at #2, #3, and #6. Unfortunately this really backed us into a corner knowing we needed to take 4 of the singles to win the match. Whitewater got on the singles board first winning at #1 and #4 putting them up 4-1. At #6 Adriel got us back into the match with a 6-0, 6-4 win. While ET was close to a victory (6-3, 5-4), Whitewater took #5 singles off a ball that hit the net cord and dribbled over for a winner. Tough way to lose an individual and team match -- dribbling ball off the net cord.

Such a tough ending for our season. We went into the match prepared but didn't play our best tennis. One thing I really appreciated during the match was how hard everyone competed. Everyone put forth an amazing effort. The Whitewater team simply played better tennis and had just enough to gain the victory.

Even in defeat the weekend was a great finish to our season. We earned a trip to ST Louis as the #2 seed in the Midwest bracket (Whitewater was the #3 seed). We had a great time being together and had time to reflect on the amazing journey we had all been apart of. The negative part of the trip (besides the loss) was it took place right in the middle of finals week. Everyone was busy studying and taking tests.

The trip was a great learning experience for the team. Even though we lose three important members of the team to graduation (Chris, Etienne and Quin) we are already thinking about what we need to do to get ready for next season. Even after a long season our eyes are now turned to training over the summer and getting ready for the fall season.

At the NCAA's

2011-05-13T19:05:00.000-07:00

We have arrived at ST Louis and are getting ready for our round of 32 match against UW Whitewater. We had the opportunity to watch Whitewater play today (they won 5-1) and we are in for a battle! Looks like UW-W plays good doubles and is solid through their line-up.

Our match tomorrow is scheduled for 2pm. However there is a good chance for rain and if we get rained out the match will be at 5pm at a nearby club.

I won't be provided twitter feeds during the match but WU-STL has a tournament page that provides live scores.

http://bearsports.wustl.edu/Sports/Content/Pages/2011NCAAMensTennis.aspx

Wish us good luck!

Whitties headed to St Louis!

2011-05-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

Just got word we are being sent to St Louis for the first round of the NCAA's. We will be the #2 seeds in that bracket and play the winner of Wisc Whitewater and Westminster. Needless to say we are very thrilled to be out of the CA region.

More later...

Great come behind victory on Mother's Day

2011-05-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

This year I tweaked our schedule a bit and scheduled the always tough LCSC Warriors the weekend before the NCAA's. The NWC conference tournament is one of the earliest in DIII and the past few years I felt the 4-week break hurt us in the NCAA's.

After the conference tournament this year we upped our playing intensity and training. Its been a grueling three-week stretch but the extra playing and training should get us ready for the NCAA's. Unfortunately finals start this week so the guys have been doing double duty -- training hard and studying hard.

Our hard work paid off in a big way today as we knocked off LCSC (#19 in NAIA) 6-3. One of our first matches this year was in Lewiston against the Warriors and they thumped us 6-3. In that match they swept the doubles and grabbed 4, 5, and 6 singles in straight sets. Our only victories in that meeting were hard fought three-set victories at #1, #2, and #3.

Today we started off a bit better in doubles with Matt and Quin posting a 8-5 victory at #3. I'm really impressed with how Matt and Quin have shook off a rough spring break trip and are now playing their best doubles. Unfortunately we dropped #1 (Andrew and Conor ) 8-6 and #2 (Jeff and ET) 8-5. In both of those matches we were up breaks but LCSC upped their games to come behind to claim both matches.

After the doubles I was a bit worried about our energy level. Everyone looked tired -- not physically tired but mentally drained. Even though we faired better in doubles that our first meeting we were still down 1-2 and facing a very talented group of singles players. LCSC top six are all international players who grew up playing on slower clay courts. Typically when we have beaten LCSC we have been up after the doubles.

Mother's day was especially kind to us as we took 5 of the 6 singles. Even more impressive is we managed to take the 5 singles without our standout #4 player Jeff Tolman (Jeff has been battling a sore hand since conference and we hope to have him back for nationals). This is really one of our best matches of the year -- in fact I feel we are playing better than when we took down #9 Trinity 5-4. Great effort, and emotional lift, for us to come back from 1-2 after doubles to take 5 of the singles. Even more gratifying since earlier in the year we lost to LCSC 3-6.

Again great effort from the entire team. And not just for this match but a great effort the past three weeks. We are all excited and ready for the NCAA's this weekend. The NCAA committee will announce the draw and locations tomorrow afternoon.

Whitman 6 LCSC 3

Doubles

1. Andrew/Conor lost Ivan Krijanto/Benjamin Robert

2. ET/Jeff lost Oliver Sindayigaya/Viktor Svoboda

3. Quin/Matt won Cesar Uauy/Lincoln Gay

Singles

1. Conor lost Krijanto 6-4, 6-4

2. Andrew def Anders Tischer 6-3, 6-2

3. ET def Uauy 6-3, 6-4

4. Sam def Sindayigaya 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 (5)

5. Quin def Svoboda 6-4, 6-4

6. Adriel def Robert 4-6, 6-1, 6-3

order of finish 2, 1, 5, 3, 6, 4

Happy Mother's Day to all Whitman moms!

White Water Rafting!

2011-04-26T06:38:00.001-07:00

A weekend after winning the NWC conference tournament I thought it might be fun to have a quality "outdoor" day. So on Sunday Coach John and I took members of the men's and women's team on a white water adventure down the Grande Ronde River.

Grant Ritchie (Whitman class of 2003) owner of Minam Raft Rentals generously provided rafts for the float. Those interested in a day or weekend of floating should check out Minam raft rentals -- they are located right at the confluence of the Minam and Wallowa rivers. Just show up to their shop, jump in the rafts and you off on your adventure. Plus they are only located 90 minutes from Walla Walla.

Since we were limited on time we did the entire 40 mile section of water from the confluence of the Minam/Wallowa Rivers to Troy, OR (Grande Ronde River) in a single day. Most people take two - three days to do this float.

The trip was absolutely incredible. The Grande Ronde is a wild and scenic river and on the trip we saw eagles (Golden and Bald), a young bear, mountain sheep, deer, ducks and geese. Everyone took turns rowing and by the end of the trip all became competent at steering the rafts. Also as if getting wet from the rapids wasn't enough some of the guys decided it might be fun to go swimming in the frigid waters. Well, truthfully they didn't really decide to go swimming but were "helped" out of the boats.

Here are some photos from the trip Flick stream of rafting trip

Again big thanks to Grant and Lottie Ritchie of Minam Raft Rentals for making Sunday such a special day!

What a day!

2011-04-18T10:40:00.000-07:00

I have to admit the NWC championship match Sunday was something special. Really a special ending (well almost ending) to a special season. What made the day so memorably was the crowd and unbelievable support from the Whitman community. Let me start by saying I (and the team) feels incredibly fortunate to have our outdoor courts. Yes there are much bigger and fancier courts across the nation. But I have never seen courts with a better location that the Whitman courts. Our courts are right in the center of campus -- next to the library, administration building, and the big campus quad called Ankey field. We are very lucky to practice and play in the middle of campus.

This weekend marked the first time in many years the NWC conference tournament was held on a college campus. The previous 10 years (or so) the men's and women's tournament were jointly held at the Yakima Tennis Club. This year the coaches decided to trim the tournament down to four teams and host each event at the campus of the regular season champion.

Congratulations to the Willamette team and coach Toby Krauel. For the second year in a row they made the NWC tournament finals and forced us to play our best tennis. They are certainly a well coached team that is improving each year. Great effort by coach Krauel to lead the Bearcats to their best conference finish in decades.

One of the special qualities of Whitman is most of the students know and support each other. Whenever we have big matches on campus we typically draw a great crowd. For instance in past year's we have had hundreds show up to watch us play UC Santa Cruz. However nothing compares to what happened at yesterday's conference finals. Not only did we have a huge crowd (overflowing the bleachers) but they were LOUD. They supported the team from start to finish. Special thanks to the both basketball teams who helped created such a special atmosphere. This is the ONLY time I have seen a group of women paint their stomachs to cheer on a tennis team! Really an incredible moment for the team to play in front of such a large and supportive crowd -- these are memories that the team will cherish for many years to come.

Going into the finals we knew the importance of starting with energy and being sharp in doubles. We have played a competitive national schedule for many years now and competed against the best teams in the nation. From hosting the ITA National Indoors, playing in the NCAA's, to hosting the number one team in the nation we have seen the importance of positive energy and strong doubles. We had played Willamette earlier in the year at their home courts and defeated them without dropping a set. However going into the NWC finals we knew Willamette presented some challenges. They certainly present challenges at the top part of the line-up (they have potent top half of the line-up) and they were on a bit of a roll coming into the NWC tournament. Additionally I watched them play very good tennis in their semi-final match (beating the #4 seed Whitworth 5-1).

In my opinion, and I will probably upset some people, but I felt the match was decided within the first 15-20 minutes. At all three doubles we jumped on Willamette quickly going up 4-1 (two breaks). With the strong start all the doubles wrapped up in 45 minutes with us sweeping 8-3, 8-2, 8-1. I've mentioned it several times over the years but I'm not a fan of 3 points for doubles. Simply not fair to value a pro-set the same as a two-out-of-three set match.

In singles our nerves showed a bit playing in front of a large crowd. Thankfully the only match we were ever behind in was #2 singles. Andrew fell behind 1-4 before finding his form to win 7-5, 6-2. Most interesting match of the day was Jeff Tolman at #4. Not sure if it was nerves or an injured hand but Jeff was up 5-2 in both sets before clinching the team match with a 7-5, 6-4 victory. I have to give major kudos to Jeff this weekend. He played in a lot of pain but never complained and took care of business. At #3 Etienne grabbed the first set 6-2 and was up a break in the 2nd set. And at #1 Conor had won first set winning 6-3 and was on serve when the team match was decided. Conor's opponent is one of my favorite players Josh Wong. Wong is a great competitor who makes you earn every point. I think the best description of Josh can be found on Scott Barnett's George Fox blog.

Hats off to the 2011 Whitman team -- this is a group that lost seven players to graduation and goes onto win the NWC tournament without dropping a set! We now have to wait several weeks to determine which regional tournament we will be playing.

Whitman 5 Willamette 0

NWC Tournament Finals!

2011-04-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

The NWC conference tournament started yesterday on the Whitman campus. Unlike past years, this year's tournament is limited to the top four teams. The winner of the tournament gets an automatic bid to the NCAA III team tournament in May.

Yesterday we defeated Pacific 5-0 setting up today's 11am final against #2 seed Willamette. Against Pacific we got off to a quick start in doubles sweeping all three matches 8-4, 8-2, 8-2. In singles we were up in all four matches when ET (6-1, 6-1) and Andrew (6-3, 6-0) closed out their matches giving us 5 points.

Weather looks great for todays finals. Should be a great final match. The Bearcats look to be playing solid tennis and will be out for revenge after we defeated 9-0 on their home courts earlier in the year.

We had a GREAT crowd in yesterday's semi finals and hope everyone will be out in force for today's final. As thanks to the fans we will be providing Hepler's Big Cheese Pizza at the start of today's match.

Hope to see everyone at the courts!

Whitties clinch NWC title!

2011-04-12T08:49:00.000-07:00

Last home weekends of the year are always emotional. It is the last time the seniors get the opportunity to play a home match. This year was a bit different since we only needed a single win to host the conference tournament. Still its an emotional weekend knowing that the tennis careers of three special young men are coming to a close. These three seniors are amazing men and have been instrumental in the success of the Whitman tennis program.

Etienne Moshevich career records:

singles 31-15, 43-16 doubles, 74-31 overall. NWC All Conference, All-American Doubles (2009, 2007), NCAA III team tournament participant. In his career ET has only lost 3 NWC matches (1 singles and 2 doubles).

Chris Bailey career records:

56-36 singles, 23-10 doubles, 79-46 overall. NWC All Conference 2nd team, NCAA III Team tournament participant. Chris has only lost 5 NWC matches in his Whitman career.

Quin Miller career records:

38-8 singles, 53-16 doubles, 91-24 overall. NCAA III team tournament participant. Quin also has only lost 5 conference matches in his Whitman career.

Luckily these three seniors have the opportunity to play at home next weekend when we host the NWC conference tournament! On Saturday we blanked UPS 9-0 and on Sunday we defeated PLU 8-1.

Whitman 9 UPS 0

Whitman 8 PLU 1

What an amazing season. In year after we graduated seven players, the 2011 team went undefeated in conference play (12-0), won the NWC title, and goes into next weekend's conference tournament as the #1 seed. Not only was the team undefeated in conference play but they went into each match with dedication and passion I have never seen from a team. This is a pretty amazing stat -- we played 12 conference matches this year and only dropped 6 matches all year!

This weekend we had several milestones:

Our 5th straight regular season conference undefeated season
Our 4th consecutive NWC title
Earned the right to host the NWC tournament. Winner of the 4-team tournament earns an automatic birth in the NCAA tournament

Next weekend the schedule for the NWC tournament is:

Saturday 10am #1 Whitman vs #4 Pacific

Saturday 10am #2 Willamette vs #3 Whitworth

Sunday 11am finals

Admission is free and we hope to see you at the courts! Here are some pictures from the weekend.

Holton-Burke gains 2nd NWC Player of the Week award!

2011-04-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

Double congratulations to junior Conor Holton-Burke who nabbed his second NWC Player of the Week award. And also by vote his teammates he earned the team's "yellow jersey" for the week.

Over the weekend Conor went 2-0 at #1 singles and 2-0 in doubles (playing #1 with Andrew La Cava and #2 with Quin Miller). Conor has had an unbelievable season going undefeated in NWC conference play in both singles and doubles. Even more impressive is the fact that all his singles matches have been at the #1 slot and all but one of the doubles have been at #1 (he played #2 doubles once).

This weekend Conor will try to lead the Whitties to their 4th straight conference title when the team takes on UPS (Saturday at noon) and PLU (Sunday at 10am). These are the last regular season conference matches of the year.

Team takes big strides to clinching 4th straight NWC title.

2011-04-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was a special and unique coaching weekend. Yes the team went 3-0 and moved one step closer to one of our goals of winning the NWC title. But more interesting was that my 8 year old daughter made the road trip with the team to Portland. I honestly can't remember seeing her so excited (with the exception of Christmas). All week all she could talk about was going on a trip with the team. When I woke her up Friday morning she jumped out of bed and rushed upstairs to start her morning because it was the big day. Was a lot of fun watching the team interact with her -- she had 12 big brothers who were willing to playing catch, run around after her, and/or carrying her around. It was a weekend she will remember for a long time!

Crazy bit of conference scheduling. Saturday we played Pacific in Forest Grove, OR and then had to return home to play Whitworth on Sunday. Actually we played Whitworth twice on Sunday as we made up an earlier match that was canceled due to poor roads. Thanks to coach Shanks for agreeing to play a double-header in Walla Walla to make up that postponed match.

Saturday we played the much improved Boxer team. Over the past few years Coach Jackson has done an amazing job turning around the Boxers. I remember a few years ago they were the worst team in the conference: now they are among of the best. In fact on Friday they dropped a heartbreaking 5-4 loss to Willamette (#2 team in the conference).

Against Pacific I felt the need to mix up our doubles line-up. We have been rock solid at #1 and #2 but haven't been as sharp at #3. To give both Matt and Quin a boost I paired Quin with Conor at #2 doubles and Matt with Andrew at #3 doubles. This allowed Jeff and ET the opportunity to play #1 doubles. Even though we won 8-3, 8-4, 8-3 all the matches were much closer than the score. Lots of long games and competitive points. Honestly looking back at the match I'm surprised the doubles scores weren't closer. I guess that is the funny thing about tennis..a few keys points here and there can determine the outcome.

The momentum from doubles carried over into the singles and we rolled through without dropping a set. The most competitive match of the day was #1 where Conor defeated Pacific's #1 player Troy Zuroske 6-4, 6-3. After our first conference match of the year I wrote this about Zuroske:

"Our only loss was at #3 singles where Jeff ran into a buzz-saw freshman Troy Zuroske. Troy played great tennis hammering huge serves all match. His serve coupled with the strange lighting made for a rough day for Jeff. I wouldn't be surprised to see Zuroske playing #1 for the Boxers in the next fews. After watching him play today I'm convinced he will be one of the top players in the NWC Conference"

And, yes, Zuroske has turned into one of the top players in the conference. In fact his only conference losses this year have been at #1 against Willamette and Whitman. He will certainly be a force in the conference for the next few years.

Whitman 9 Pacific 1

On Sunday we played a pretty unique format against Whitworth. The past couple years we have traditionally played an A team and B team against each other. Since the weather was beautiful we played the A team match outdoors and the B team match indoors. Its not often that all 12 players get the opportunity to play at the same time.

Between the two matches we only dropped 1 match. Match of the day goes to Jeff Tolman who was down 2-6, 1-3 before rallying to win 2-6, 6-4, 10-7.

After the weekend we are now 10-0 in conference and play our last two matches against two teams we beat earlier in the year (PLU 7-2, UPS 8-1). If we win both matches we will be 2011 NWC Champions, earn the #1 seed at the NWC conference tournament (only the top 4 teams make the tournament), and most importantly get to host the conference tournament.

Here is a link to photos from the weekend. Unfortunately half of the matches over the weekend were played indoors (Pacific's covered courts or our indoor courts) and I only took pictures of the outdoor matches. There are some pretty sweet pictures of the team at Multnomah Falls.

Hooray for ET!

2011-03-28T14:00:00.001-07:00

Etienne was recently named the NWC player of the week for the past two consecutive weeks. Great honour for a player to win the award twice in a season little alone twice in row.

ET certainly deserved the awards. During our 6 day spring break trip he went 8-4 in singles and doubles against the top teams in the nation. Beyond his great playing on court, ET is a amazing team leader. The "lion" has shown everyone on the team how to play with a passion and love of the game. His presence, passion and energy has been a driving force behind our successes this season.

Special thanks

2011-03-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

We wrapped up our 2011 spring break trip this week and it wouldn't be as successful or enjoyable without the help of family and friends. I spent the morning organizing and updating my flickr page to be a bit more user friendly. All the photos are now in "sets" and all should be tagged with players names.

Here is the photo set from Spring Break.

This is the link to the 2011 season that shows all the photo sets by event.

If parents/friends want the original picture please let me know and I will send you a copy. And yes I'm enjoying my new camera very much!

Papa Roston you were the MVP of the trip! Thanks for supplying us with water, ice, gatorade, and snacks for our matches. And it was a very special treat going to dinner Tuesday night. Not often we get the opportunity to eat an incredible steak house.
Tesmond family it was great seeing you during our weekend matches. Thanks for taking the team out to dinner. It was our first team dinner that featured a belly dancer!
Sadeghi's thanks for your support the entire week. Was a wonderful way to wrap up the trip by having dinner at your beautiful house. Good luck keeping most of the guys this week!
Gary and Barb Tolman thanks for watching on matches on Saturday and providing lunch for the team. Your support is much appreciated.
Solomon family -- was great seeing the entire clan again! After the weekend it made me realize how lucky I was to coach both Solomon boys.
Nancy Holton, thanks for making the trip out to watch our weekend matches. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your notes about my blog and pictures.
Borshansky's thanks for following us around So CA and taking pictures!
Pat Burke thank you for the amazing opportunity to watch the Lakers. Certainly one of the special highlights of the trip.
John Hein and Brett Axelrod for driving us to the Pasco airport.
And lastly my incredibly wife for her unwaivering support. Being a coach's wife isn't very easy during the season especially during a seven day trip away from home!

Now it is time to get out the fly rod and enjoy a few days of clean air, traffic free roads, and snow capped mountains.

Wrapping up spring break

2011-03-17T09:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay in posting but between practices, matches, driving and dinners we have had a couple long days.

Tuesday we dropped a competitive 3-6 match to #15 Bowdoin on the CMS courts. We got off to a bit of a rough start in doubles. Even though Jeff/ET won easily at #2 doubles we dropped #1 (Conor/Andrew) 8-5, and the #3 team of Quin/Matt let a 6-3 lead evaporate and lost 6-8.

Bowdoin is known as a good singles team and they lived up to their billing winning 4 of the 6 singles. Our only wins were Jeff at #4 and Adriel at #6. The entire team certainly gave a great effort but we really needed to have the lead after doubles to crack the tough Bowdoin singles line-up. After the match I felt we were in a pretty good place emotionally, but physically we looked tired. This was, after all, our 5th match in 5 days against nationally ranked opponents. The intense matches, heat, travel, and fierce competition was taking its toll. At this point I was already worried about our Wednesday regional match at Cal Lutheran.

For the Cal Lutheran match I pulled Chris (he had been struggling) and decided to switch ET and Andrew (ET has been playing incredibly well). Against Cal Lutheran (#12 in nation) we not only got off to a bad start in doubles but a very low energy start. Number three doubles played horrible losing 8-1 and #1 doubles didn't fair much better losing 8-2. This left the doubles in the hands of Jeff/ET at #2 doubles. Losing #2 doubles would of not only put us down 0-3 but would of sucked the energy out of the tired Whitties. At 7-8 Jeff hit one of the most amazing, clutch shots I have ever seen. Early in the game CLU hit a lob over Jeff's head. At this point Jeff didn't have many options as he scrambled to get the ball. With his back completely turned to the net he flicked a shot on the right side of body that skimmed over the net resulting in a CLU error. This one shot saved the doubles. After that shot Jeff and ET went on to dominate the match winning in a tiebreaker.

Enough though we went into the doubles down 1-2, Jeff/ET provided us a much needed lift. We were down but our fighting spirit was restored. What unfolded in singles was one of the most amazing team matches I have been a part of.

CLU has one of the best #1 players in the nation. Conor gave a valiant effort but lost 6-1, 6-2. Jeff also dropped his match at #4 6-3, 6-1 giving CLU a 4-1 lead. To make things even worse we lost the 1st sets at #2 ET and #3 Andrew.

Sam got us on the board with a 6-4, 6-1 win at #6 making the team match 2-4. Now things get whacky -- CLU is completely in charge of the match when both ET and Andrew win the second sets. At #5 Adriel had won the 1st set but dropped the 2nd. Team score was 2-4 for CLU with the 3 remaining matches in third sets. I don't know what more to say about ET. He is a hell of a ferocious competitor. I sat with ET through most of his 2nd and 3rd sets and he had a look in his eyes that said he wasn't going to lose. After dropping the 1st set 1-6 he rallied to win 6-4, 6-3. It wasn't long after his victory that Adriel won 6-0 in the 3rd. Match score was now tied 4-4 with Andrew in his third set!

Andrew was down a break at 3-4 when he got his 2nd wind to break serve. At 4-4 Andrew holds at love putting the pressure squarely on the CLU player. At 4-5 Andrew continues his strong play to go up 15-40 earning 2 match points. On both match points Andrew does exactly the right thing at the right moment and works his way to the net. At 15-40 he closes a bit too hard on a floating ball that drops below the net -- Andrew caresses the ball a bit wide. At 30-40 Andrew comes in on a big approach and has a high forehand volley that he sticks into the open court but pushed it ever so slightly long. The CLU player is off the hook and regains his composure. Both players end up holding to force a tiebreak. Was an absolutely wonderful match but unfortunately for us CLU prevailed 7-5 in the tiebreaker. I believe this is only the 2nd match in my coaching career where the team match was decided by a 7-6 in the 3rd set match (the other was a victory over Redlands). Freaky how an inch separated us from an improbable comeback and defeat.

Can't give my players enough credit for this match. This was our 6th match against national level teams in 6 days. We weren't used to playing outdoors, dealing with the heat, and all were dead tired. Yet through all this we never lost our composure or belief in each other. Obviously I would of been thrilled to beat #12 CLU on their home courts but honestly I don't think I could be more proud of the young men on my team.

In the past we have been criticized as a team that couldn't play against the top teams in the country. This trip should dispel those criticisms. Even though we went 2-4 on our trip we defeated the #9 team in the country and played close with every team we faced. We are a unquestionably now a better team and now have the belief we can hang with the top teams.

We are lucky to have a two-week spring break and have next week off before returning to campus for the last part of our conference schedule. I can't wait to see how the year unfolds....

Ah the ups and downs of tennis

2011-03-14T16:24:00.000-07:00

Tennis certainly has its ups and downs. On Saturday we defeated the #9 team in the nation and today we lost to a lower ranked UT Tyler 3-6. As a team we knew the importance of the match today -- winning would lock us in as one of the top teams in the West. I don't feel like we had a let down but rather got out played by a feisty UT Tyler team.

In doubles two of the three team teams came out firing. I don't have the scores in front me but I think we won at #1 and #3 by identical 8-4 scores. Unfortunately #2 doubles had their worst match of the year losing 1-8. Still going up 2-1 after doubles certainly put us in the driver seat.

In singles Tyler was simply too tough for us. Not sure how else to say it but we didn't perform like we would like to in clutch situations. For the most part we didn't play poorly, but rather didn't play well at certain times of the matches. We lost three three-set matches and one match 7-6, 7-6. However this is exactly why we take a spring break trip: the opportunity to play good teams which not only makes us better players but a tighter team. Honestly in all of my years coaching this is one of my favorite teams (sorry alums). They have pushed each other all year to get better, incredibly supportive of each other, and a blast to be around. I'm sure today's experience will make us a better team down the road.

Here are the singles scores (again I don't have my score book in front of me so its a bit of a guess).
1. Conor lost 7-5, 4-6, 6-2
2. Andrew lost 3-6, 7-6, 6-4 (Andrew was up a break 5-3 in the 3rd, but then down 0-4 in the 3rd).
3. ET won 6-4, 6-1
4. Jeff lost 6-1, 6-1
5. Chris lost 4-6, 6-4, 6-4
6. Adriel lost 7-6, 7-6

Tonight promises to be especially entertaining for the team as we came by 14 tickets to the Laker game!

Tomorrow we play Bowdoin 10am at the CMS courts.

Whitties knock of #9 Trinity!

2011-03-12T22:04:00.000-08:00

What a special day for Whitman tennis! Today in the Stag-Hen we had the opportunity to play Trinity University (#9 in the nation) for 5th/6th place. Trinity is one of the great programs in DIII and they typically make a good run at the NCAA's.

Going into the match we knew doubles was critical. On any given day Trinity might have the top 1, 2, 3 doubles line-up in the nation. In fact their #1 team of Cocanoughar/Kowel were the runner-ups at the 2010 NCAA doubles championships. Honestly they don't drop much from one to three doubles. It is funny how scheduling goes -- in the fall Andrew/Conor had the opportunity to play the #1 Trinity Team at the ITA Small College Championships. The Trinity duo ended up winning that match 6-7, 7-6, 10-6. Going into today's match Andrew/Conor knew they had their hands full, but they also knew they could compete with and beat the TU team. Perhaps more importantly they were hungry for a rematch.

At #1 doubles Andrew/Conor played their best tennis of the year. The broke the first game and never looked back taking the match 8-2. They returned flawlessly (I think TU only held once) and played a very aggressive brand of doubles -- keeping the ball low and closing hard. At #2 doubles Jeff/ET also returned incredible well. This was a close match from start to finish. A couple times Jeff/ET were down break points but managed to stay together and string together important points when they most needed it. Major kudos to Jeff for a very strong hold at 7-5 to clinch the match 8-5. At #3 doubles Quin/Matt had a see-saw match. Was close all the way through until Trinity got the break at 6-5 to serve for the match. Senior Quin rose to the moment and absolutely bombed 3 returns on match points to bring the match back onto serve. Unfortunately Matt wasn't able to hold and Trinity got the point at #3 doubles 8-6.

Great singles competition. I felt the TU and Whitman guys pushed each other all day to player better and better tennis. Jeff continued his absolutely blistering play to defeat All-American Cory Kowal 6-2, 6-4. Wonderful tennis from Jeff to put Whitman up 3-1. Andrew had a tough match losing to Cocanaugher 6-0, 6-2. Score was now Whitman 3 Trinity 2. However the match was very tight as Conor and Chris both dropped the 1st set, and Adriel was down 1-4 (2 breaks) in the 1st. Fortunately ET was up a set. Basically we needed to win two of the remaining matches but were down in three of them.

At 1-4 Adriel starts executing his game plan and completely turns around his match to win the 1st set 7-5. Etienne is continuing to play with passion and purpose and is up 6-3, 5-0. Chris is down a break in the 2nd set and at #1 Conor is at 3-3. Chris ends up dropping his match 6-2, 7-6 making team score 3-3. Etienne is struggling to close out his match but is up 6-3, 5-3 serving, Conor is in a 2nd set tiebreaker, and Adriel had a couple breaks in hand going up 4-1. At that moment I then hear the sweetest sound -- the eruption of the crowd as ET wins his match 6-3, 6-3! Whitman 4 TU 3. A few minutes later TU takes #1 singles 6-4, 7-6 tying the team score 4-4 with #6 singles still on court. At this point in the match Adriel was playing great tennis and closes out the match 7-5, 6-1 giving us the sweet 5-4 victory.

Great effort from the team to defeat the #9 team in the nation. This is the highest ranked team we have beaten since I start coaching at Whitman 12 years ago. We have tomorrow off and then finish our spring break with three straight matches.

Match score Whitman 5 Trinity 4
Doubles
1. Conor/Andrew def Cocanougher/Kowal 8-2
2. ET/Jeff def DelaFuente/Frey 8-6
3. Quin/Matt lost Murray/Carroll 8-6
Singles
1. Conor lost Frey 7-5, 7-6
2. Andrew lost Cocanaugher 6-0, 6-2
3. ET def DelaFuente 6-3, 6-3
4. Jeff def Kowal 6-2, 6-4
5. Chris lost Haugen 6-2, 7-6
6. Adriel def Murray 7-5, 6-1

Spring Break Day One

2011-03-11T22:01:00.000-08:00

First off I apologize for shortness of this post. It has been a long couple days and we have an early match tomorrow morning.

Thursday we left campus at 9am for the trek to Southern CA. Academically it is tough to miss the last day before spring break -- lots of tests and papers are typically due before break. In fact I know last night several of the guys were up to the wee hours of the morning working on papers.

Today was the first day of the Stag-Hen tournament hosted at the campuses of Claremont and Pomona. This is one of the top DIII tournaments of the year. This year the 8 team tournament is loaded with four top 10 teams. This morning we started off the tournament against the #7 team in the nation Kenyon. We had been looking forward to this match for weeks: it isn't often we get the opportunity to play a top 10 team on a neutral surface.

Doubles was rough on us today. At #1 doubles Conor/Andrew went down 0-4. However as our #1 team was down our #2 and #3 teams were both up breaks at 3-1. At that point it was all Kenyon. Hard to swallow watching Kenyon reel off 7 of 8 games at #2 and #3. We dropped all 3 matches 8-4.

Here is where things get interesting. This Whitman team has a ton of heart and unbelievable support. The guys pull for each other up and down the line-up and from behind the fences. I'm proud to say there is no quit in this team. Kenyon won the team match 8-1 but that score doesn't tell the entire story. In the singles we lost 5 tiebreaks and 2 matches in three sets. Hell of an effort and I'll let the scores tell the story.

Singles
#1 Conor lost Polster 6-4, 7-6
#2 Andrew lost Burgin 6-3, 7-6 (Andrew was up a break 5-3)
#3 ET lost Williams 6-1, 6-7, 10-6
#4 Jeff def ye 4-6, 6-2, 6-4
#5 Chris lost Matthews 6-1, 6-0
#6 Adriel lost Griffin 7-6, 2-6, 10-7

After a lunch break we took the court to face a very talented Swarthmore team. I must admit I was nervous about this match. We were tired, not used to playing outdoors in the sun and had to play a dangerous team. And yes Swarthmore is a dangerous team the past two years they have pulled in seven three-star recruits. On paper they look the stronger team.

This time in doubles we took off a bit quicker and went up breaks in all three matches. However #2 doubles turned into a bit of breakfest as the two teams took turns breaking each other. At #3 doubles Quin/Matt again went up 3-1 but managed to drop five straight games to go down 3-6. Thankfully Andrew/Conor gave us a needed boost and rolled to a 8-2 victory. However Quin/Matt dropped #3 doubles 8-6 to even the match at 1-1. The finals doubles point came down to Jeff/ET who took #2 doubles in a tiebreak.

Singles only had one three set match but the match was a heck of a battle. Conor played strong ball rolling to a 6-2, 6-2 victory. At #2 Andrew won 6-3, 6-2 but it was a very close match. At #4 Jeff ran out of gas and lost to a talented freshman 6-2, 6-2. At #5 Chris continued to struggle losing 6-1, 6-0. With the match at 4-3 all eyes turned to ET (at #3) and Adriel (at #6).

At #3 ET won the opening set 6-2 but dropped the 2nd set 1-6. At the end of the 2nd set ET is cramping and he is emotionally out of the match (this was his 2nd three setter of the day). Doesn't matter how big one's heart is if the body is falling apart. In my mind this put the match squarely on Adriel's shoulders. Thankfully Adriel was up to the challenge and won the 1st set 6-3. Adriel's 1st set was incredibly long so ET was starting the 3rd when Adriel was beginning the 2nd set.

I couldn't believe my eyes when ET raced out to a 4-1 lead in the 3rd! Here he was cramping, no energy and absolutely lighting up his forehand! In an effort to keep the points short ET was going for broke most every shot. Truly one of the more amazing displays of courage I have seen. In the end Adriel clinched the match with a gritty 6-3, 6-3 victory. With all eyes focused on ET and he didn't disappoint winning 6-2, 1-7, 7-6 win. I was quite relived to come away with a 6-3 win.

Tomorrow we play for 5th/6th place against Trinity University who is #9 team in the nation. You know its a tough draw when you are playing for 5th place against the #9 team in the nation! Even though the team is sore and tired we are looking forward to the opportunity to play one of the top teams in the nation. Match starts at 10am.

Whitman 6 Swarthmore 3
Doubles
1. Conor/Andrew def Youngblood/Kelm 8-2
2. Jeff/ET def Kaye/Bressman 9-8
3. Quin/Matt lost Carciore/Udelson

Singles
1. Conor def Youngblood 6-2, 6-2
2. Andrew def Kelm 6-3, 6-2
3. ET def Bressman 6-2, 1-6, 7-6
4. Jeff lost Kaye 6-2, 6-2
5. Chris lost Collard 6-1, 6-0
6. Adriel def Park 6-3, 6-3

Matt Tesmond -- Yellow Jersey Winner

2011-03-08T08:31:00.000-08:00

By vote of his teammates, Matt Tesmond will be wearing the yellow jersey this week. Congratulations to Matt!

Weekend Recap

2011-03-07T08:14:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend we were able to win two matches in Tacoma (8-1 vs UPS and 7-2 vs PLU) but mother nature got the better of our Whitworth match forcing us to reschedule after spring break.

I must say logistically last weekend presented some challenges. All week I had been keeping an eye on the condition of Snoqualmie Pass (the I90 pass through the Cascade Mountain Range into Seattle). During the early part of the week the pass was closed but as the week progressed the road conditions improved. Additionally since Spring Break is around the corner (starts this Friday) some of the guys had a lot of academic pressures and couldn't make the trip. Because of this we ended up taking nine players to the Tacoma matches and Coach Jake was going to bring the remaining three players to Whitworth for our Saturday match. Since we were playing three matches in 24 hours this would allow us to rotate players helping ensure everyone would remain fresh during the long weekend.

Before the match summaries let me state how much I'm enjoying our conference this year. Most every team in the NWC is fired-up and ready to play. We have a couple programs that are rising and some new coaches that have really brought incredible passion and energy to their teams. For us this has been an unbelievably great thing. Everyone weekend we now playing teams that bring energy to the courts which in turns adds fuel to our own fire. In past years we have played some of the best teams in the nation during our spring break and we were not ready, or able, to match their intensity. This year our competition in the NWC has not only made us better players, a better team, but prepares us for the energy some of the top teams bring to the court. Coach Eric Drew is one of the new coaches in the conference that has their teams fired-up and ready to play.

In the UPS match Matt and Quin started off poorly at #3 doubles and things didn't get better. Just let me state (and I'm sure Quin would agree) it was perhaps one of, if not the worst, match Quin has played in four years of college tennis. He was off kilter, not hitting the ball well and couldn't keep two balls in the court. It was a bit strange since the weekend before Quin had played beautiful tennis.

Thankfully we were able to take #1 and #2 doubles -- at #1 Conor/Andrew won 8-4, at #2 Jeff/ET won 8-3 but we at #3 we lost 2-8. This gave us a 2-1 lead heading into singles.

One thing that makes tennis a great game is it full of second chances. After the doubles I briefly contemplated sitting Quin out of singles. However one look in his eyes told me how desperately he wanted a chance at redemption. In singles we rested Conor and Andrew shifting our line-up a few spots. This meant some of the guys that normally don't get to play were in singles line-up to play the high-energy Loggers. In singles we didn't drop a set. At #1 ET won 6-2, 6-1, at #2 Jeff won 6-2, 6-2, at #3 Chris won 6-2, 6-1, at #4 Steven won 6-2, 6-3, at #5 Quin started to play a bit better winning 6-3, 6-2 and at #6 Matt rolled to a 6-2, 6-0 victory.

Box Scores Whitman 8 UPS 1

Immediately following the UPS match we took to the courts against PLU. PLU is always tricky to play and since I have been coaching at Whitman we have always had great matches against the Lutes. Last year they graduated 5 seniors and are down, but this is a proud program that would would nothing more than break our 70+ match conference winning streak.

Because of the heavy rains a PLU women's match was moved to the UPS indoor courts. To help speed up the evening we agreed to start out match with singles. Once we finished the singles we would take three courts to finish our doubles and the women could start their match on the other three courts.

Against PLU we rested Jeff, ET and Quin in singles. Hats off to the Lutes they played hard and competed well. At #1 singles Conor had a tough match winning 6-3, 6-1. However in this match Conor was up 4-1 in the 1st when the PLU player broke back and held making the score 4-3. Conor did a great job of upping his level of play to only lose one more game. At #2 Andrew had a major battle agaist PLU's lone senior Scott Sheldon. Andrew won a tight 6-4, 6-3 match. At #3 and #4 singles Chris and Steven had the tough task of playing back-to-back singles matches. Too keep one's focus for 4+ hours of play is incredibly difficult and it showed as both of them dropped long three-set matches -- Chris lost 7-6, 1-6, 6-3 and Steven lost 7-6, 4-6, 6-2. Both of them put up a great fight but the PLU players were just a bit too much for them. At #5 Matt played his 3rd straight match (singles and doubles against UPS) winning 6-3, 6-2 and at #6 the silky smooth Atanas "Nasko" Atanasov got his first opportunity to play this season winning 6-1, 6-2.

Against PLU it was my hope to clinch the match after the singles and then substitute players into doubles line-up to make sure we were rested for our Saturday match against Whitworth. The only exception was Conor and Andrew who were going to play the #1 PLU doubles team. The #1 PLU doubles team has been been playing great this season and not dropped a match. All week Conor/Andrew had been looking forward to playing them.

However with the match still not determined we went with our normal doubles line-up. Before the start of the doubles it was incredibly gratifying to have Quin pull me aside and let me know how badly he wanted to play doubles. Instead of moping around dwelling on his earlier poor performance earlier he proved to be a real warrior.

Honestly I was a bit worried going into the doubles. It was approaching 9pm and we had been in the UPS building without a break since 1:30pm. We were all tired and facing an inspired PLU team. My fear was the three doubles teams would take the court with a defensive attitude, get tight, and potentially allow the PLU teams to get on a roll. I proud of how we took the courts in doubles. All three teams started out with high energy and played aggressive doubles. The dual match was decided about 30 minutes after the start of doubles as Conor/Andrew raced out to 7-0 lead at #1 doubles (they ended up winning 8-1). Quin got his "second chance" in doubles and played unreal hitting a string of winners that was awesome to behold (winning 8-2). And at #2 ET/Jeff continued to absolutely crush the ball winning 8-3.

Box Score Whitman 7 PLU 2

Unfortunately for us Mother Nature got the final say in our weekend. We had a 5 hour drive to Spokane for a Saturday afternoon match against Whitworth. Originally we planned on driving over Snoqualmie Pass, spending the night in Ellensburg before continuing onto Spokane. However because of heavy snow the pass was closed for the night forcing us to spend another night in Seattle. Whitworth graciously agreed to reschedule and play us in a double header when they come to Whitman in April.

Special thanks to the La Cava family for hosting us over the weekend. We had a blast!

On Thursday we fly to California for our annual spring break trip. On Friday we get the opportunity to play the Kenyon (#7 in the nation) in the 1st round of the Stag-Hen.

Tacoma here we come!

2011-03-03T08:44:00.000-08:00

Busy weekend for the men's tennis team. Friday we play at UPS -- 3pm vs UPS and 6pm vs PLU. We are going back-to-back so it will be a full day of Whitman tennis. On Saturday we travel to Spokane to take on Whitworth at 3pm. Yes 3 matches in 24 hours!

Whitman enters the weekend 5-0 in the conference, UPS is 1-2, the Lutes are 0-3 and Whitworth is 2-2. We are looking at maintaining our momentum heading into spring break next week.

If you can't be at the matches I will try to give match updates via the twitter feed.

Yellow Jersey - Will Huskey

2011-03-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

Yellow Jersey for the week goes to Will Huskey! Will picked up his first dual match win with a 6-1, 7-6 victory at #6 against Linfield. Hearty congratulations!

Two wins at home

2011-02-27T07:47:00.000-08:00

After playing our first five matches on the road it was nice to finally be playing at home. Saturday presented a challenging day as we played a back-to-back double header. In the first match of the day we played Lewis & Clark (0-2 in conference play). This was a great match for the team as we mixed up the line-up giving most everyone the opportunity to play.

Doubles started off strong, grabbing an early lead in all the matches. At #1 doubles Quin/Matt won 8-3, at #2 doubles Sam/Adriel won 8-0, and at #3 the freshman duo of Will/Sam won 8-1.

In singles Quin really thrived playing in the #1 slot. Quin was very excited for the opportunity to play #1 because LC has one of the better #1 players in the conference. Quin has been playing great tennis this season and dismantled a very good player 6-1, 6-1. The rest of the matches featured similar scores -- #2 Sam won 6-0, 6-1, #3 Adriel won 6-1, 6-0, #4 Matt won 6-2, 6-0, #5 Will won 6-0,6-0 and #6 Steven won 6-2, 6-1.

Immediately following the LC match we took to the courts against conference rival Linfield College. As a team we had been looking forward to this match for several weeks. Besides being a good and well-coached team, the Linfield match was our only home match against a regionally ranked opponent before our spring break trip. Linfield entered the weekend 2-0 and #9 in the region.

In doubles we got off to very quick starts at #2 and #3. Jeff and ET are really thriving together and feeding off of each other's energy. Both of them are absolutely crushing returns and playing aggressive doubles. After Jeff held to open the match they immediately broke to take a 2-0 lead. After that break they went on to win 8-4.

I really like how our #3 combo of Quin and Matt have been playing doubles. Matt is serving well, going after returns and closing hard at the net. Quin has always been an aggressive doubles player but this year is much more thoughtful about his play and has been focused on setting up the points. Even though Matt and Quin won 8-2, their match featured several long deuce games.

Number 1 doubles was one of the strangest matches I have seen in a long time. Linfield has a very good #1 doubles team that is capable of playing spooky good doubles. They also came out fired up to play Conor/Andrew. One thing about being nationally/regionally ranked is EVERYONE comes after you. So far Andrew and Conor have handled that pressure very well. However against Linfield they didn't play their best tennis early in the match and the Linfield guys executed their game plan flawlessly. In fact at one point I think the Linfield guys were up 7-4 serving. At 7-4 a funny thing happened -- Conor/Andrew started playing much stronger tennis (especially Andrew) and the Linfield team got a bit tight trying close out the match.

At 7-4 break point Andrew crushed a forehand return winner which ignited the team and the crowd. At 7-5 Andrew held at love making the score 7-6. The hold at love was incredibly important Andrew/Conor had now won 5 straight points, had the momentum in the match and had the large crowd squarely behind them. At 7-6 serving Andrew/Conor again found a way to break evening the match at 7-7. Both teams held to set up the deciding tiebreak. All the momentum we had carried over the tiebreak and we quickly went up 5-0. Oh how things can quickly change. At 5-0 Andrew was serving and only needed two points to win the match. At this point Andrew did what most people would do and went for the ace. Unfortunately he double faulted. At 5-1 Andrew hits a great serve where the Linfield player stabs at the return and sends up a weak lob. Conor gets tight, doesn't get properly set for the ball and misses while trying to crush the overhead. With the tiebreaker at 5-2, the Linfield team is starting to get some energy. We miss two straight returns and the Linfield team is right back in the match. In the past 4 points we have double faulted, missed an overhead, and missed 2 returns!

Now it's 5-4 Conor serving -- Conor hits a great 1st serve, Andrew crosses to the middle to intercept the return but the ball skips off the net tape making it unplayable for Andrew. At 5 all the two teams trade points. At 6-6 Conor rips a forehand return winner down the line giving us match point. At 7-6 Andrew was able to close out the match. Certainly was one of the more thrilling comebacks I have seen in a while.

In singles we started with #1 Conor, #2 Andrew, #3 ET and #4 Jeff. After the doubles we were all incredibly fired up after Conor and Andrew's amazing come back. I was hoping we would maintain that energy going into the singles. Often after a great match or high energy moment there is a corresponding low energy moment. On Saturday there was no such lull with Jeff and ET. They were like sharks in the water that sensed victory. Both of them won in under an hour -- Jeff first 6-1, 6-2 quickly followed by ET who clinched the win with a 6-1, 6-1 victory.

At #2 Andrew was able to break early in each set against a very big serving Linfield player winning 6-4, 6-3. Conor had his hands full against a player he had defeated in three sets at the Fall ITA tournament. Once again they split sets with Conor taking the match breaker 10-5 (6-3, 2-6, 10-5).

Because of major exams Chris Bailey couldn't play so Sam got the nod to play #5. Honestly Sam might have played the best tennis of anyone yesterday. He was absolutely crushing his serve and groundstrokes. He was in such control of his game that he began to serve and volley and even approach on the return. Great move from Sam, he hits the ball so well off the ground but often doesn't press advantage and finish points at the net. Once Sam becomes comfortable finishing points at the net he is going to be a completely different player. Sam ended up beating one of the best 5 players in the conference 6-1, 6-1.

Oh those whacking freshman. Will was like a big puppy in his excitement of getting the opportunity to play #6. Will took advantage of the opportunity and rushed out to a 6-1, 5-1 lead. And then Will started playing like a nervous boy at his first dance. Three times he served for the match and three times he couldn't put the match away. With the entire team at court side Will was finally able to win the match in a tiebreak (6-1, 7-6). Gotta love those freshman moments!

Its been a busy week playing five matches in six days. Next Friday we play another double header in Tacoma -- 3pm vs UPS followed by a 6pm match against rival PLU (at UPS).

We are now 1st place in the NWC conference with a 5-0 record.

Scores for the match:
Whitman 9 Lewis & Clark 0
Whitman 9 Linfield 0

Jeff Tolman -- Yellow Jersey Winner

2011-02-24T21:32:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Jeffrey Tolman who gathered almost every team vote to win the yellow jersey. Jeffrey showed great resilience over the weekend and played his best tennis at the end of long weekend trip.

Also big congratulations to the Men's Basketball team who defeated #3 seed Lewis & Clark to move onto the NWC Championship game Saturday night.

2 Posts in one!

2011-02-23T08:46:00.000-08:00

First off Congratulations to Conor Holton-Burke for being named NWC Men's Tennis player of the week. Playing #1 singles and #1 doubles, Conor went 6-0 including knocking off two 2009 All-Conference players.

Secondly, I uploaded photos from our Portland trip to Flickr. Some very good action photos and sweet photos from our alumni dinner in Portland. For those not familiar with Flickr -- most of my photos are tagged. Clicking on a tag will only show photos that contain a certain person.

Parents if you want copies of the pictures send me an email.

Portland Trip

Portland part 2

2011-02-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

On President's day we wrapped up our swing through the Portland area with a 1pm match against Willamette (indoors). After playing a double header on Sunday in extremely cold weather and spending many hours in a bus the team was a bit stiff. However after a good warm-up the Whitties were ready for battle.

In an earlier post I mentioned the effects of graduating 7 seniors. Graduating that many good players could decimate at team. We were lucky to mitigate that effect by having strong player development and a talented freshman class (Andrew La Cava, Steven Roston, Will Husky and Atanas Atanasov). Something positive, however, has happened with the player graduation -- the current team has found its own voice. It appears that this year's team is about energy and passion. Honestly this might be the most vocal and energetic team I have coached. From top to bottom, from those playing to those watching, this team is absolutely committed to each other. I think playing the energized and vocal George Fox team Sunday awoke that voice.

On Sunday we played with the kind of energy and passion that is truly to awesome to watch. From the first point of doubles to the last point in singles the Whitman team played with incredible energy and love for each other. I know some will scoff at the term 'love,' but the chemistry on this team is special and the team support is overwhelming.

Willamette is one of the better teams in our conference and this year we only have the opportunity to play them once. Last year they finished 3rd in the conference but had a nice conference tournament where we faced them in the finals. This year they are a much better team: they return their talented top 4 players from last year and added two good players at 5 and 6. With a year of experience under their belts and two new players this is certainly a team to watch. Coach Toby Kraul has done great things for this program and they are certainly a program on the rise.

In doubles all three Willamette teams served first and all three were immediately broken. From that point on the Whitties were off to the races -- at #1 Andrew/Conor won 8-2, at #2 Jeff/ET won 8-2 and at #3 Matt/Quin won 8-0. I'm really impressed with the doubles results -- to play that well and post those scores against a good team is simply amazing.

We carried that momentum over to singles. At #1 Conor had a nice match winning 6-2, 6-1 over ITA finalist Cody Ferguson. Conor has to be pleased with this match since last year he narrowly defeated Ferguson in a match breaker. A few minutes later Jeff clinched the match at #4 with a 6-3, 6-0 victory. By the end of the Willamette match Jeff was flying around the court crushing every ball in site. At #6 Sam was down a break at 1-2 before winning 6-3, 6-0. At #5 I think Chris might of been down an early break but won 6-3, 6-1. Andrew was down 0-3 at #2 before getting a handle on nerves and posted a very good 6-4, 6-2 victory. Last match on was The Lion (ET) playing against a very talented Michael Baumgartner. Last year Baumgartner had an impressive freshman debut defeating three defeating NWC Players of the Year (including our own Matt Solomon). It was a very entertaining match to watch as both players were crushing the ball. In the end ET was a bit too much winning 6-4, 6-4. Great for the Whitman team to see ET start to regain his old form.

As a team we certainly rose to the occasion of an early season important conference match on the road. To sweep an improved Willamette team without losing a set (this might be the first time we have not lost a set to Willamette) certainly shows great team improvement and intensity.

We play our first home matches of the year this Saturday -- 1pm vs Lewis Clark and 5pm vs Linfield (#9 in the West Region).

Whitman 9 Willamette 0

Portland Trip Part 1

2011-02-20T21:30:00.001-08:00

What a fun trip to Portland. Even though we didn't play until today we decided to travel to Forest Grove, OR on Friday night to watch our basketball teams play Pacific. I would like to think we gave our women's basketball team a bit of lift. I'm not sure if it was the very loud cheering or the shock of seeing the men's tennis team with "Missionaries!" painted across their chests but whatever it was the women's team a 22-0 run once we arrived at the gym! By virtual of the win the women clinched the #4 seed in the upcoming conference tournament. We stayed on to cheer on the men's team but unfortunately they dropped a heart breaker. Congratulations to Coach Ferenz and Coach Bridgeland -- both have done a tremendous with the Whitman basketball programs. The women finished the year as the #4 team in the conference and the men finished #2!

Today (Sunday) was a long, cold day of tennis. This morning we started off playing Pacific University at their covered courts. It was certainly chilly in the morning -- in fact, high during temp during the match was 42 with a wind chill of 39!!!! Fortunately going into the weekend we knew it was going to be cold so everyone brought heavy jackets, gloves and long underwear.

The cold weather wasn't our only problem today. We played a much improved Pacific team in their covered facility. The Pacific facility features three covered courts but the screens surrounding the courts are normal windscreens. With a covered roof and normal wind screens around the courts the lighting is very strange. The layout makes tracking the ball very difficult -- almost like watching a ball under a strobe light.

In doubles #2 (ET and Jeff) started off strong going up 6-0 in about 30 minutes. Jeff and ET's tremendous energy fired up the rest of the team and got us on the board with a quick 8-1 win. At #3 Quin and Matt won 8-3 and at #1 Andrew and Conor were deadlocked at 5-5 when they went on a roll winning 3 straight games.

In singles we maintained our strong play sweeping 5 of the matches in straight sets. Our only loss was at #3 singles where Jeff ran into a buzz-saw freshman Troy Zuroske. Troy played great tennis hammering huge serves all match. His serve coupled with the strange lighting made for a rough day for Jeff. I wouldn't be surprised to see Zuroske playing #1 for the Boxers in the next fews. After watching him play today I'm convinced he will be one of the top players in the NWC Conference.

Once the Pacific match finished we made sandwiches and headed to George Fox for our afternoon match. After a short warm-up we took to the courts to play an incredibly fired up Fox team. It was fun to see the Bruins completely fired up and ready to battle us for every point. I know their energy made us raise our level of play.

Once again Jeff and ET got us going with with a solid start (I think they again went up 6-0). Both #2 doubles and #3 doubles finished with 8-2 victories. At #1 doubles Andrew and Conor broke open a close match winning the final four games posting an 8-4 victory.

In singles we sat our normal #3 (ET) and #4 (Jeff). This gave Adriel Borshanksy (#5) and Steve Roston (#6) the opportunity to get in some valuable match play experience. Both rose to the occassion winning 6-1, 6-1, and 6-2, 6-1. The most competitive match of the day was at #1 where Conor Holton-Burke got a measure of revenge (Barnett handed Conor his only conference loss last year) defeating Scott Barnett 6-4, 5-7, 10-6. A bit of an interesting match. In the 2nd set Conor got up an early break and served for the 2nd set at 5-4 only to get broke and then drop the set. However in the tie-break he played inspired tennis racing out to a 6-0 lead before winning 10-5.

Big kudos to Coach Ninteman, he has turned around the George Fox tennis program and I'm sure they will be a force within the conference for a long time.

We finish our road trip tomorrow at 1pm match in Salem against Willamette. Even with warm weather in the forecast (high of 52), Willamette has decided to play the match off campus at an indoor tennis club (Courthouse)a few miles from campus.

Links to the matches

Whitman 8 Pacific 1
Whitman 9 George Fox 0

Special thanks to the Mah and La Cava families for the incredible hospitality this weekend.

Small matches changes for Sunday

2011-02-19T22:39:00.000-08:00

Great weather in the Portland area this weekend so it now looks like our Sunday start time against Pacific is 10am and our George Fox match will be taking place on the George Fox campus (not Tualatin Hills).

Hope to see ya on the courts!

Incredible News!

2011-02-18T09:30:00.000-08:00

Let me start off this post by stating what Whitman has meant to me. I came to Whitman in the fall of 1984 not knowing what to expect in college. As a first generation college student (my parents were the first in their family to finish high school) the concept of college was very foreign. For me Whitman College was an unbelievably powerful experience -- I am who I am today because of my Whitman experience. Plus I met my lovely wife at Whitman!

I was absolutely thrilled to return to Whitman as men's tennis coach (I was working as a DI coach). Those that have played for me the past 12 years know my passion for Whitman and the tennis team. One of my life/career goals has been to establish a endowment for the men's tennis team.

Today I'm so incredibly proud and humble to announce a gift was made to the College by my teammate Benson Porter ('86) to establish the Jeff Northam Men's Tennis Endowment. Without a doubt the establishment of this endowment is the most powerful experience in my professional life. When I first heard of the creation of the endowment I was absolutely floored and spent a good 30 minutes crying.

The establishment of this endowment will help ensure future generations of Whitman tennis players will receive a top notch experience. Expect an official announcement from the college in the coming weeks.

Portland Alumni Dinner Saturday Evening

2011-02-17T15:52:00.001-08:00

We are having a team + Whitman Alumni dinner this Saturday 7pm at Nicholas Restaurant, 3223 NE Broadway, Portland, OR 97232

Please email me if you are planning on attending the dinner so we know how many to plan for.

Match time changes this weekend.

2011-02-17T09:06:00.001-08:00

Weather might be an issue this weekend in the Portland area.

Our Sunday match against Pacific is now changed to 9am.

If we encounter wet weather the George Fox match will take place 2pm at Tualatin Hills otherwise it will be at 3pm in Newberg.

On Monday our match against Willamette will be at 1pm if indoors (Courthouse) or 2pm if dry (at Willamette).

Hope to see you at the courts!

Yellow Jerseys

2011-02-15T10:18:00.001-08:00

First off I have to apologize for not posting the winner of the yellow jersey last week. We voted on the yellow jersey at our late Tuesday practice and I left Wednesday morning on a recruiting trip.

Last week the winners were:
Conor Holton-Burke
Quin Miller

This week the winner of the yellow jerseys:
Andrew La Cava
Etienne Moshevich

If you see any of these four players wish them well and congratulations on winning the jersey!

Whitties drop hard fought match to LCSC

2011-02-14T09:44:00.000-08:00

Its funny how 10 minutes can turn a match. Sunday we traveled to Lewiston to play Lewis-Clark State College. LCSC is consistently one of the top NAIA programs in the nation (currently #16 in NAIA) and we typically have some real battles with the Warriors. Making matters worse, we have always struggled against LCSC in their indoor courts -- in fact in all my years of coaching at Whitman we have only won once at LCSC. Coupled with the fact we narrowly defeated LCSC last year on our home courts (4-3) we knew were going to be in for one heck of a battle.

Doubles...love or hate the 9 point system it can determine the outcome of the match. Valuing a pro-set of doubles the same as a full 2 out of 3 set singles match doesn't make a lot of sense. With a pro-set there is no chance to reset the match by starting a new set. No chance to recoup and/or regroup if things go poorly. Also all the doubles matches tend to crescendo at the same time. Yesterday our match completed turned within a few minutes. At one point I felt we might go up 3-0 after the doubles. At #2 doubles Jeff/ET were serving for their match at 7-6. At #1 doubles Andrew/Conor had broken the LCSC team to even the match at 5-5. And at #3 doubles we were up two breaks. And right when things are looking at their best everything collapses.

From the far bank of courts (the LCSC tennis center has 2 banks of 2 courts arranged in square) there is a loud eruption and it is clear something bad for us happened at #3 doubles. At 3-2 serving LCSC breaks after a long 10 duece game to even their match and completely steals the match's momentum. At #1 doubles Andrew/Conor play a sloppy serving game after breaking to even out their match at 5-5. And at #2 doubles we are serving 7-6 30-15 and we play an out ball that would of given us 2 match points. The LCSC team starts to play inspired tennis and doesn't drop another game.

The match proved to be a good lesson about the fragile nature of doubles. The momentum in pro-sets can quickly change. After being even or up in the doubles we end losing all three -- #1 doubles lost 6-8, #2 doubles lost 7-9 and #3 doubles lost 4-8.

I have enough seniors on the team that they realize the situation. Getting swept in doubles means a huge hurdle to overcome. While winning 5 out of 6 singles matches between two equal teams can happen it takes a monster effort and a bit of luck.

I have to say that I'm proud of the effort the team. It would of been easy for everyone to hang their heads and simply go through the motion of playing out the match. Instead the Missionaries battled tooth and nail for every match. We ended up taking the top 3 singles matches in dramatic fashion. At #1 singles Conor is in a slugfest playing a talented freshman from Germany. Conor takes the 1st set 7-6 and has a couple match points at 5-4 in the 2nd against the Germans serve. Saving the match points on his serve inspires the young German who takes the 2nd set 7-5. However the 3rd set was all Conor as he pushed through to a 7-6, 5-7, 6-0 victory. At #2 singles Andrew had one heck of a battle. He dropped the 1st set in a tight tiebreaker and quickly went down 0-4. After he holds at 1-4 we have a talk about keeping his energy up and staying positive for himself and to help get Conor through his difficult match. In a team match their are few things tougher than being on the court next to a teammate who is getting rolled. Andrew totally rises to the occasion winning six games in a row to take the 2nd set 6-4. In the 3rd set Andrew again goes down a break but rallies to win 6-7, 6-4, 7-5. What a gutsy performance from the freshman. At #3 singles ET is locked in an incredibly long battle. In fact, on the court next to him Jeff had lost at #4 singles 6-4, 7-5 AND Chris had lost 6-2, 6-4 at #5 when ET was only part way through his third set! ET's match featured long, punishing points on the slow courts gritty courts. ET was pounding his forehand for all his worth and the LCSC player was playing like the match was on the slow red clay of the French Open -- retrieving every ball forcing ET to hit a bigger and better shot. At 4-4 ET earns the break giving him the opportunity to serve for the match. However at this point he is now cramping in his hand, right arm, both legs, and stomach. It was hard to watch him try to finish his match while in pain. It took him 4 match points but in the end ET was able to gut out the match. If one ever need proof of why I call ET "The Lion" this was it -- I swear, sometimes I think his heart is too big for his body. Last match on was Sam who didn't play his best tennis in a losing 6-2, 6-4 effort at #6.

Even though we lost 3-6 this was a great match for us. We had great intensity, effort and competitive fire throughout the match. It was also good to play a very competitive match in front of a large partisan crowd. Lastly I must say we had our hands full with a very talented LCSC squad. They really have 6 players who can play #1 on any given day. In fact their #6 player during our match played #1 for the Warriors three years ago.

We start conference play this weekend with 3 tough matches in 2 days -- Sunday we have a double header with the improved squads of Pacific and George Fox and on Monday we play Willamette.

I recently purchased a nice camera and am in the process of learning how to take good sports pictures. Below are a few pictures of Etienne's of the closing minutes of ET's singles match. If they don't come through the email check out my Flickr stream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/77626588@N00/?saved=1

Also I have been putting many pictures up on Facebook.

Alumni Showdown

2011-02-07T09:42:00.000-08:00

What a weekend! The Superbowl was a bit anticlimactic after Saturday's campus/alumni showdown. Such a blast to have a number of alumni back on campus for a day of playing and weekend of memories.

Coming into the match the alumni were serious about the competition. Once most of the alumni e made it campus Friday night (David Deming didn't arrive until midnight) we grabbed some pizza and headed over to Bratton for a late evening hit. To assure their solid play, the alumni stayed up late Friday night making sure they were well hydrated going into Saturday's matches.

On Saturday the alumni and current players battled it out for six straight hours! Great tennis all day long. After such a wonderful event I think we were all winners!

Photos of the weekend.

USTA Campus Showdown = Alumni Showdown

2011-02-04T07:06:00.000-08:00

Recently the USTA/ITA started a new program called the Campus Showdown. These events are one-day, open tennis events held on college campuses. I figured hosting a campus showdown would be a great way for some of the guys to play extra matches. I didn't figure on the alumni getting wind of the event and coming out to play! Saturday's Whitman Campus Showdown will feature 8 Whitman alumni, 6 current team members and 2 PNW junior players. So really this is a Whitman tennis alumni showdown!

I can't even begin to explain how excited I am for this event. Besides the tennis I'm excited to see Whitman alumni Justin Hayashi ('09), Thomas Roston ('10), Nadeem Kassam ('10), David Deming ('10), Steven Ly ('07), Robbie Munday ('07), and Brad Changstrom ('05). Rounding out the alumni group is assistant coach Jake Cappel ('10).

Great alumni-player match ups on Saturday:

Conor Holton-Burke vs Robbie Monday

Adriel Borskansky vs Justin Hayashi

Matt Tesmond vs Nadeem Kassam

Quin Miller vs David Deming

Will Huskey vs Jake Cappel

Steven Roston vs Steven Ly

Singles matches start at 9am and doubles should start around 2pm. Below is a video preview for the showdown.

Update from Ben Marcus

2011-02-03T08:31:00.001-08:00

Another one for the alumni. I just got a rather nice update from Ben Marcus '92 (I think) that I thought I would repost.

_____________________

I would love nothing more than to be able to come to one of these alumni functions! I should have said this a long time ago, but I am so impressed and proud of the program you are running. Having coached (at a much lesser level) for close to twenty years now, I can fully appreciate the strength of what you now have going both academically and athletically. And, I love reading the detailed reports from the season. Our team was so much less competitive than what you have going now, but we still managed to win a conference doubles title my senior year--and considering our lack of training and facilities in comparison, we did alright. I know you were part of a very, very good team right before my class came in, so had a very different experience.

After teaching tennis, then teaching high school and coaching teams in Arizona since college, I've now been living in Switzerland for the last two and half years, teaching middle school social studies at Zurich International School and coaching the middle school tennis team (boys and girls). My wife, Vanessa, and I now have a 16 month old son, Jack, who was born in 2009 on my birthday Sept. 27--pretty cool.

We are really enjoying life over here, and my tennis team road trips even take us to other countries, which is kind of cool to think about. Always happy to put up any Whitman guests if they can make it over here! Also cool to be on a continent that really appreciates its tennis, and in a country whose most well known person (by leaps and bounds) is a tennis player.

I hope all is well, and would love for you guys to make a European road trip. How about a meet up at Wimbledon or the French Open? How about a reunion over here. If not, I would really love a way to make it over for my 20th reunion in 2012, although I have a feeling the timing during the year won't be so great for me. Hope the season brings you much joy! Take care,

Ben Marcus

Yellow Jersey

2011-02-02T09:59:00.001-08:00

Well it isn't quite a 4-way but this week we had a 2-way tie for the yellow jersey. And yes I agree with you Winklboy we shouldn't allow ties. Looks like I need to work on a tiebreak process.

Seven players were nominated this week. Winners for the week.

Adriel Borshansky

Chris Bailey

Congratulations to both Adriel and Chris!

Alumni dinner in Portland Feb 19th

2011-02-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

Saturday Feb 19th the team will traveling to the Portland area for matches on Sunday (George Fox, Pacific) and Monday (Willamette). Dr Clifford Mah has graciously agreed to host a team/alumni dinner Saturday evening in Portland. If you are a Whittie tennis player of old the team would love to see you at dinner.

Please email me if you are interesting in attending the dinner. We need to have a head count for the banquet hall.

Also there might be tennis with the team that Saturday. I'm working on getting courts at the MAC club but won't know until later next week.

Calling all Whitman tennis alumni!

2011-01-30T20:41:00.000-08:00

The first EVER Whitman tennis alumni reunion is now officially a go. Mark off Friday Nov 4 - Sunday Nov 6 on your calendars for a fun filled weekend in Las Vegas! Doesn't matter the year of graduation or which Whitman coach you played for (Coach Burgess, Coach Furman, Coach Thomas, Coach Snider or myself), all are invited!

If you are interested in participating in the reunion please send me an email. Special thanks to reunion chairs Justin Hayashi, Matt Solomon, and Etienne Moshevich.

Yellow Jersey

2011-01-26T15:24:00.000-08:00

Those that follow the Whitman tennis program know that one of our weekly traditions is players select who they felt was the team leader for the past week. There is no specific criteria for the award -- it can be based on a player's presence, academic work, playing, effort, conditioning efforts, practice, helping others, etc.

This week was the first time there was a four-way tie for the award! The co-leaders for the past week are:

Quin Miller
Etienne Moshevich
Chris Bailey
Conor Holton-Burke

Congratulations to all!

First match of the year!

2011-01-23T09:47:00.000-08:00

We are officially off and running! With only three days of practice we headed off to Cheney to face the multinational squad from DI Eastern Washington University. Those that have been following our schedule know this was a very late scheduled match -- like 9 days ago. Honestly I don't like playing matches so early in the season but when good friend Coach Haworth called saying they had a match slot available I couldn't resist the temptation to play.

We left after lunch on Friday figuring to get up to Cheney in time to check into the hotel, have a good dinner and hit in the fieldhouse/tennis courts at Eastern Washington. I have to say the first road trip of the year is always a special trip. Its fun to load into the van and listen to the guys banter back and forth about what they did over break, classes and of course the ever popular topic of girls.

We arrived into Cheney, checked into the Holiday Inn Express and then headed out to a very nice Italian restaurant for dinner. Being the first trip of the year and having the entire team together (all except Nasko) I thought we would we would start the year off with a dinner at one of the nicest eateries in Cheney. Unfortunately this turned into a bit of a mistake as it took over 90 minutes for us to get our food which many of us had to wolf down so we could get in some court time. Because of the late dinner we only ended up with 30 minutes of hitting time.

Those that have been to the EWU know its a challenging place to play. In fact some teams refuse to play the Eagles on their home courts (the previous weekend Oregon forced a match venue change to a tennis club in Spokane). The fieldhouse is a HUGE concrete box with 4 courts. However it is also a multi-purpose facility with a track (of a different surface) immediately behind the courts, basketball lines on the courts, no backdrop (just a concrete wall), lightning fast courts, and different lighting.

Even more difficult for our match was the EWU squad. Coach Haworth has done a nice job blending very strong foreign talent with some of the best PNW players. The DI Eagle squad was simply too strong for us on Saturday.

The match started off on a promising note. At both #1 and #2 doubles we went up early breaks. Unfortunately at #3 we were dominated from the start with Chris and Sam dropping a quick 8-1 match. The #2 duo of Jeff Tolman/Quin Miller were playing their first match together and performed quite well. Besides being up an early break at 2-1 they also had numerous other opportunities to break. Even though the match was 8-5 it was only one break and honestly the match was separated by a few points here and there. At #1 doubles Andrew and Conor continued their strong play going up 6-3 against a very good EWU team. In fact in the fall the EWU team of Mussolini/Sanchez defeated the #1 doubles team from U of Oregon. About the time Andrew/Conor went up 6-3 the other doubles had finished and all attention in the fieldhouse shifted to #1 doubles. At that point Conor and Andrew made an early season mistake and let the situation get the better of them. I felt that their energy leveled dropped a bit and they waited for the EWU to make mistakes instead of continuing to play strong, aggressive doubles. Also the EWU team really turned up the heat nailing clutch returns on big points. In the end the EWU team rattled off 5 straight games to take the match.

In singles we played most of the 1st sets pretty close. I was proud of the attitude and competitive spirit of the team. At #1 freshman All-American La Cava lost 6-3, 6-2 to a player who the previous weekend defeated the #2 singles player from U of Oregon. At #2 Conor had a slugfest succumbing to a transfer from Boise State (Stefan Simikic) 6-3, 6-4. Number 3 (Tolman) and 4 (Bailey) had identical 7-5, 6-1 scores. In both matches the Whitties played even to 5-5 only to get broke allowing the EWU player to serve out the set. Sam Sadeghi had one of the best matches of the day at #5 singles losing 6-4, 4-6, 10-4. Once Sam won the 2nd second I was convinced he was going to win the match. He was playing great and the EWU player (James Russell) was flustered and rattled. Hats off to Russell, he completely turned around his game -- firing huge serves, ripping monster forehands and snapping sharp volleys. Disappointing day for Matt Tesmond who stepped into the line-up at #6 but lost 6-1, 6-0.

Although exhibition matches don't show up on the official score we had some nice efforts in singles. At #7 Quin Miller won in 3 sets. Additionally freshman Steven Roston rallied back from 3-6, 2-5 down in the 2nd to even the set at 5-5 before the match was halted. In doubles Will Huskey played well at #4 doubles with Matt Tesmond dropping their match 8-5. Was fun to see them save off 3 match matches at 7-3 to stretch the match.

We are now off for three weeks until we travel to Lewiston, ID to take on NAIA power Lewis-Clark State College.

Congratulations Jasper!

2010-11-05T07:13:00.001-07:00

Cool Shades Jasper!
Originally uploaded by jeffnortham

Jasper (class 2010) recently decided to attend Dental school at University of Melbourne in Australia! Jasper reports he is excited to see a new part of the world and study in a new environment. Special opportunity for Jasper as British Columbia and Australia have reciprocal agreement for Dental school. This means after graduation Jasper can return home to practice Dentistry.

For the Whitman tennis family this is pretty special as Jasper is the 4th member of the team to start Medical/Dental school this year!
Jasper Follow - DDS University of Melbourne
Thomas Roston - DR University of British Columbia
Reid Bennett - DR Dartmouth
Christoph Fuchs - DR Baylor

Community Service

2010-11-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

Friday the Fighting Squirrels had the opportunity to show their community spirit by helping with the Walla Walla Downtown Foundation's annual trick-or-treat event. This event is truly a special Walla Walla event. Each year the downtown merchants hand out candy to the youngsters of Walla Walla. It is estimated that 3,000-4,000 dressed up kids show up for this event!

With so many kids in costumes (difficult to see) and the sheer volume of people, safety is always a concern. To help out members of the team served as crossing guards at several of the major downtown intersections. Coach even got into the spirit of Halloween and threw on the Fighting Squirrel outfit for the day!

Pumpkin Carving!

2010-10-26T08:54:00.000-07:00

Halloween is the time of a great tradition on the Whitman campus -- no not trick-or-treating downtown, not costume parties, but rather the men's tennis team annual pumpkin carving! As is the annual tradition with this event my children pick their favorite pumpkins as winners. The team is full of bright young men who over the years have come to realize the way to pumpkin carving victory was to carve anything that resembled something to do with Pokeman. Anything Pokeman and my kids loved it. Either my kids have matured (they are 12 and 8) or Pokeman is starting to lose its popularity because this is the first year a Pokeman themed pumpkin didn't win.

This year's winners of the Annalise award for Outstanding Pumpkin Carving goes to -- Jeff Tolman and Will Huskey for Lion howling in the moon! And the Benjamin award for Mastery of all things Pumpkin goes to Nasko (for his batman rendition). Note this was especially sweet award for the Bulgarian since he is new to art of pumpkin carving.

I also prepared a HUGE beef brisket in my smoker (15 pounds) for the team to enjoy after the

pumpkin carving. As you can see from the picture it was one massive piece of meat! Everyone raved about the dinner but I'm beginning to think if I BBQ any type of meat the guys on the team will devour it and claim it was amazing food. Something about college guys and food..they never seem to get enough!

ITA Small College National Championship

2010-10-14T09:08:00.001-07:00

One of the fun things about traveling is the sense adventure. Playing tennis has provided Whitman players (and myself) a great opportunity to explore new parts of the country. This week I was lucky enough to travel to Mobile, AL with Conor and Andrew as well as Coach John, Alyssa Roberg and Elise Otto of the women's team. Because of the nature of tennis scheduling we really never to get travel or play at the same time as the Women's team. It was a special treat traveling and hanging out as a group.

The trip to Mobile was certainly an adventure -- especially for our talented freshman Andrew La Cava. Prior to the trip Andrew spend almost the entire week in the Whitman health center or the ER. Unfortunately he caught some bug and had a temperature of 103.6. Needless to say he was down and out for the entire week prior to the trip. By the end of the week I was worried if he was going to be able to make the trip. Luckily by Sunday he was feeling well enough to check out of the health center and get in a few practice sessions.

We are very fortunate that Whitman's October break is the same week as the tournament. Since there are no classes on Monday or Tuesday there is a bit less academic stress surrounding the tournament. Still a lot for the players to manage but something that is doable. Our trip started very early Tuesday morning as we all met at 4am to drive to Pasco for our 6am flight. As usual all the players carried their tennis bags onto the flight. As we boarded the jet the players dropped their bags off on the Ala Cart luggage rack and away we went to Denver. At Denver we got off the jet and waited for the racket bags to come off the Ala Cart rack. We watched as the bags unloaded the plane (and sat in the rain) and then were reloaded into the plane! As we were sitting at the gate Coach John ran back down the jet way to find out why the bags were put back on the plane. Apparently this is something you aren't suppose to do as the gate agent started running after him yelling, and I'm not kidding, "Jimmin Christmas you can go back on the plane!"

We made it to New Orleans but unfortunately our bags didn't. Too make matters even worse there was no way to track our bags since they weren't checked. The nice United travel person said they would probably be in on the 6pm flight. Since it was only 1pm and we wanted to get to Mobile to hit we split up: I drove all the players to Mobile (about 2.5 hours) and Coach John stayed behind for the tennis bags.

Once we were at Mobile we had to deal with the logistics of hitting without tennis equipment. We ended up demoing some rackets from the local tennis shop, buying a couple pairs of shoes, borrowing a pair of shoes (luckily Coach John and Andrew have the same shoe size), and borrowing some clothing (I had my bag of tennis stuff). It was very cool to see how the players handled this situation. They had fun with the situation and ended up having a pretty good hit that evening. To finish off our day of adventure Coach John called saying all our stuff had arrived and he was on the road to Mobile.

On Wednesday we had play-in matches against the singles and doubles winner of the Texas region. Since the ITA has Texas and the PNW making up a section (strange geographic mix) the two regional winners playoff to make the final 8. In the morning Andrew faced off against Bobby Cocanougher who is an experienced senior from Trinity. In the first set Andrew forced an early break going up 3-1. At that point the Trinity senior raised his level of play to reel off 6 straight games going up 6-3, 1-0 (up a break). Big props to our freshman he didn't get discouraged and battled hard taking the 2nd set 6-4. The 3rd set went down to the wire. Andrew was serving at 5-5 and had an unfortunate game: second guessed a volley and pushed it long, missed an overhead that was in the sun, a net cord winner from his opponent and he was broken. Cocanougher served out the match for a hard fought 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 victory.

After an hour break Andrew team-up with Conor Holton-Burke to face Cocanougher and Kowal of Trinity. We knew this was going to be a tough match -- Cocanougher/Kowal have played together for 4-years and had great results. In fact last year they lost in the NCAA doubles final and two years ago they lost in the semi-finals. Going into the year they are the undisputed #1 doubles team in DIII. In the first set the Trinity duo outplayed Andrew/Conor -- they several chances to break Conor/Andrew (in fact in one game Conor served at 0-40) and the closest we got to break was one game that went to 30-30. Then a funny thing happened in the tiebreaker: we ripped off 6 straight points and took the 1st set 7-6. The second set was a reversal of the 1st. Now we were holding serve easy and having break points. In fact Andrew/Conor broke pretty early in the match to go up 3-2. They held that lead through the set and Andrew served for the match 5-3. The Trinity guys rose to the challenge nailing returns and broke at love. Just like the 1st set the 2nd set came down to a tiebreak. We had a match point on Trinity's serve at 5-6 in the breaker but missed the return. However we won the next point going up 7-6 with Conor serving. Our guys play I, Conor nails a big 1st serve, and Andrew moves to intercept the weak reply with a forehand volley and then a funny thing happened -- he carved the ball too fine and misses the volley. With new life the Trinity team wins the next two points stealing the set and more importantly the momentum. In the 3rd set match breaker the Trinity duo went up a mini-break early and never looked back winning 10-6. Tough, tough match with the Trinity team escaping with a 6-7, 7-6, 10-6 win.

Obviously Andrew/Conor are disappointed losing that match. However I have to say that it was one of the best doubles matches I've seen. Both teams played great pushing each other to great heights. Also great to see the wonderful sportsmanship displayed by both teams. Not sure about the Trinity team but I know Andrew/Conor felt like they had made new friends after that doubles match. My feelings about the doubles match were confirmed when Mr Kowal came over and told me that he has been watching DIII tennis for almost 4 years and that was the best DIII doubles match he had ever seen.

I should mention that yesterday the Trinity team won the DIII title knocking off Emory's #1 team 6-2, 6-2 in the finals. We wish them the best of luck in the Super Bowl play off this weekend.

Even though we dropped two close matches I, and the players, come away from the ITA's with the belief we can compete with anyone in DIII. I know this experience will prime the pump of passion and drive our guys to work hard this off season. Even though we lost 7 seniors to graduation I feel the Fighting Squirrels will have a special year.

An outdoor team adventure!

2010-10-05T07:59:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend we had our annual team backpacking trip. For some on the team it was their first time camping and for many it was their first time backpacking. For me the backpacking trip is a combination of two things I love -- coaching and exploring the outdoors. I find this trip to be a very powerful team experience. There is nothing like sitting around a campfire while being miles away from other people and at a place where there is no cell phone service, no electricity, no email, no twitter or facebook. Freshman Will Husky summed it well when in the middle of trip he made the observation "I never realized how noisy my life is."

The spot I picked for this year's trip was the Elk Flats trail which is deep within the Wenaha Wilderness area. A Wilderness Area is a federally protected tract of land where the use of mechanized equipment is prohibited -- even the use of a bicycle is forbidden. The only way into such areas are on horseback or on foot. At the base of Elk Flats the North and South Fork of the Wenaha run to together to form the main Wenaha. Its a beautiful but long hike (5 miles). I also like the "pacing" of this trail. The first and last third of the trail are pretty steep whereas the middle third is pretty flat which allows for easier walking. Another reason I decided on Elk Flats is that I'm pretty familiar with the area. Earlier in the year I had done two different overnight backpacking trips on this trail. During my previous treks I was lucky enough to have seen a wide variety of wildlife including a small herd of elk, deer, and a mother bear with her cub.

For this trip I decided to drive the team up Mill Creek and along the top of the Blue Mountains. Besides being a stunning drive it is actually a shorter drive than taking the maintained mountain roads. However part of the road along the top of the Blues isn't maintained and is very rocky and rutted in places. For the trip we a rented Surburan and took my '85 Jeep CJ7. Over the years I have been rebuilding my Jeep as a mountain vehicle and was confident it could make it across the high mountain road. However I wasn't so sure about the newer Surburan. My fears of the Surburan proved to be true as it's tires couldn't handle the mountain road. Luckily I've had plenty experience changing flat tires on my trips in the Wenaha (8 flats now and counting) and am comfortable changing a flat.

Once to the top of Elk Flats and got all the gear situated and packs adjusted we headed down the trail. I was hoping we would come across some wildlife on our hike but 10 guys hiking together make a fair amount of noise and I'm sure any animal within miles scampered off before we got close.

Once at camp we had a few hours of daylight left to set up tents, gather firewood for the night, and explorer the area. I find it a good experience for guys to learn how to set up a tent. I also find it amusing to watch people who have never set up a tent wrestle with poles, move tents about and try to figure out how everything goes together. I don't find it so amusing getting out of my tent and warm sleeping bag to help someone put on a rain fly (you're welcome).

For dinner I made a mess of fajitas over the camp fire. The day prior to the trip I cooked up (and froze) steak and chicken for dinner. To save time while camping I also sliced up onions, a variety of peppers, and jalapeños. To complete dinner preparations I used a food dehydrator on several containers of salsa. I have never used a dehydrator and was surprised how well salsa dehydrated.

As far as dinner was concerned let me state it was hectic cooking for 10 people over a campfire! I had several things going at once with minimal equipment: water boiling to make rice, reconstituting the salsa, cooking beans over the fire, and had 2 big Fry Bakes (which are awesome for camping) going with steak and chicken fajitas. Not to brag but the dinner was awesome and guys wolfed down 5 pounds of the steak fajitas and about 3 pounds of chicken. And of course for dessert we made s'mores over the campfire.

Darkness comes quick and heavy when in the wilderness. After dinner we sat around the campfire sharing stories and chatting about everything - girls, tennis, life. As everyone was getting ready for bed a few guys took advantage of the surroundings and walked over to a near-by clearing to watch the stars. It is amazing how bright the night sky is when there are no lights within 20 miles!

Sunday morning everyone woke up on their time. I was the first up about 8am and others (Will and Etienne) slept in until 11am. Once everyone was up we wandered down to the S Fork of the Wenaha to explore around the water. I dared a couple people to wade across the stream in their bare feet. In the end only Andrew and Will made it across the small stream. For the rest that attempted the wade it was simply too cold and they turned back (or in Etienne's case he fell down). For the record the stream is pretty chilly. In August I measured the water temp in the heat of the day and found it be about 52. My best guess is the water temp that morning was in the high 40's.

Once we cleaned up camp making sure we left no trace it was time for the pack out. Its MUCH harder packing everything uphill and the hike really took its toll on me. I'm in nowhere near the shape of the young guys it took me nearly 2 hours to make the pack out. Conor and Steve decided to use the hike as an opportunity for conditioning and jogged part way (with packs) and made it in 1 hour 10 mins!

Drive back to Walla Walla was uneventful. Since we were down a spare on the Surburan we took the "maintained" route back to town. Luckily we made it back without blowing out anymore tires!

I posted pictures on my flickr page. I'll try to post video from the trip later this week. Lastly I should mentioned we were lucky enough to convince '09 alum Justin Hayashi to join us on the trip. He is part of the Boeing management program and was visiting Whitman over the weekend to recruit for Boeing.

Wrapping up ITA's

2010-09-28T10:37:00.001-07:00

After rain moved the tournament indoors on Saturday it was a treat to be able to play the semi-finals outdoors. The only bad thing about having the last day of the tournament on Monday is there weren't many tennis spectators around to watch! Since I had sent several players home Sunday with Coach Matt Solomon there were only a handful of Willamette and Whitman players around to watch the matches.

We were fortunate to have three of the four semi-finalist in the singles. Teammates, and doubles partners, Andrew La Cava (#16 seed) and Conor Holton-Burke (#6 seed) duked it while Chris Bailey (#9 seed) faced off against Willamette's Cody Ferguson (#8 seed).

I was worried how Chris was going to respond to his 8+ hours of tennis the previous day. As I mentioned in an earlier post Chris had to cut his morning warm-up short due to soreness. After the first 2 games the first set belonged to Ferguson -- after he lost 8 of the first 9 points he settled down to win 6 straight games. I was really impressed with Chris's competitive attitude. Even though he was tired and sore he bounced back to win the 2nd set 6-2. Unfortunately the first three games of the 3rd set sealed Chris's fate. In his first two service games Chris was serving 40-15 only to lose both games. Once Ferguson earned those two breaks he was off to the races winning the 3rd 6-1. Hats off to Ferguson. I was really impressed with the improvement in his game. I remember writing a post two years ago how impressed I was with Ferguson when he entered the conference. He certainly has proved to be one of the best players in the conference.

The Whitman semi-final was a tipsy-tossy affair. Each set featured numerous service breaks and lead changes. In the end Andrew was able to squeak out each set 7-5, 7-5.

Even though Andrew is a freshman I felt he had the edge going into the finals. As a newcomer to the league his game is a bit new to opponents. Also after watching Ferguson go through three straight Whitman players we had a good idea of how to play him. Lastly Andrew has played numerous national events and is used to playing "big" matches. In the finals Andrew was a cool customer winning 6-1, 6-1. He was able to go up early breaks in each set and never looked back. In fact I think he only faced one break point all match. Unbelievable tournament for Andrew -- he comes into the tournament as the #16 seed and doesn't lose a set the entire tournament!

After a short break Andrew took the courts with Conor for the doubles final against Whitman's Sam Sadeghi and Chris Bailey. Andrew and Conor were too much for their teammates winning 6-1, 6-1. I must point out that Chris and Sam had a great tournament and both have made huge strides in their double games. They came into the tournament as our #4 team and knocked off the #6 seeds before defeating our #3 and #2 teams.

In a few weeks I will travel to Mobile, AL with Andrew and Conor for the ITA Small-College National Championships. They will face off against the winners of the TX region (played this weekend) for the right to make the final 8.

Congratulations to Alyssa and Elise of the women's team for winning the women's double title. They will represent the PNW at the ITA National event!

Day two of ITA

2010-09-27T08:24:00.000-07:00

I know the title says day two of the ITA but we are actually starting day three. Rain swept through the Willamette Valley yesterday pushing the tournament back a few hours and a change of venue to nearby indoor courts. Was a very long day we didn't get back to the hotel until 11pm last night.

All I can say about yesterday's tennis is wow. I felt like we had the top players in the conference coming at us all day long. In fact the day reminded me of one very long (11 hour) dual match. In the first round of matches we were lucky to have Whitman players on 5 out of 6 courts. One of the most entertaining matches of the day was freshman Andrew La Cava vs senior Etienne Moshevich. It was unfortunate these two teammates had to play against each other. Andrew ended up getting the better of his teammate 7-6 (11-9), 6-3. Besides the high level of play it was wonderful seeing how the competed against each other. Even though this was an important match they played it like true brothers -- complimenting each other, replaying points, and truly being supportive of each other. Etienne is such a blessing to have on the team. Besides being a warrior on the court he is supportive of his team and a true leader.

In the other morning matches we had our struggles. Quin Miller couldn't keep his tournament streak alive (he beat the #4 seed) but bowed out to Daniel Redfern (#1 from Willamette and #13 seed). Great tournament for Quin. He played spectator tennis on Saturday to reach the 2nd day. Freshman Steve Roston had his chances against the #5 seed before losing in 3 tough sets. I was pleased to see how Steve bounced back from losing the 1st set to stretch the match to the distance. The much improved Sam Sadeghi lost to the #8 seed Cody Ferguson 6-3, 6-1.

Conor Holton Burker won his first match 6-0, 6-4 setting up a show down against the #1 seed. Jeff Tolman came back from a break in the 1st set to win 7-5, 6-3. Match of the day goes to Chris Bailey (#9 seed) who had a big win over the #2 seed 7-6 (7-0), 3-6, 6-3 (I think that was the score). Was a great clash of styles. Chris was pounding balls trying dictating play during the match. His talented opponent is a born retriever who not only gets ever ball back but puts most every shot near the lines. Was fun to watch the contrasting styles.

The quarter finals saw more great tennis and interesting match ups:

Conor was playing the #1 seed and #1 player from Linfield

Chris was playing the #5 seed and #1 player from George Fox

Andrew was playing the #13 seed and #1 player from Whitworth

Jeff was playing the #8 seed and #3 player from Willamette

I felt like our team was playing an all-star team! In those matches we only had 1 hiccup. Jeff (#3 seed) lost to the much improved Willamette junior Cody Ferguson 7-5, 6-4. I know Jeff is disappointed in his results and hopefully he will become stronger by the experience. Conor had a very streaky match but ended up prevailing against the #1 seed (and top 20 in the nation) 6-0, 2-6, 6-3. Conor won the first 8 games of the matches only to lose the next 6 games. Conor showed great maturity calming his nerves and rallying back after dropping 6 straight games. Andrew served and volleyed his way to victory with a solid 6-4, 6-4 win. And Chris was against stretched to the limits defeating the #5 seed 7-6, 4-6, 6-3.

Great night of doubles for the Whitties. Conor/Andrew started the ball rolling with a 8-2 victory over the #3 seeds (#1 from Willamette). The continued their great play with a 8-6 victory over the #1 seeds (#1 from Linfield). The other side of the draw was just about all Whitman -- 3 of the 4 teams on that side of the draw were from Whitman! In the first match Jeff and ET won in convincing fashion against the #1 from UPS 8-3. In the other quarter final match Sam/Chris came from a break down to defeat teammates Quin Miller/Matt Tesmond 8-6. In the semi's Sam/Chris played unbelievable doubles defeating teammates (and #2 seeds) Jeff/ET 9-8.

We are just about ready to start the semi's of the tournament (I'm writing this post from the stands). Chris is incredibly sore after 8 hours of intense tennis -- 2 three-set singles matches (long matches) and 2 doubles matches that went down to the wire. It will be interesting to see how much Chris has left in the tank as he takes on the red hot Ferguson. The other semi's is an all-Whitman match up as doubles teammates Conor and Andrew play each other. After the semi's we will take an hour break and start the singles finals. Later this afternoon Conor/Andrew will play Sam/Chris for the doubles championship.

I apologize for mistakes, misspellings and/or grammar problems with this post. Matches are about to started and I don't have the opportunity to proof-read.

I'll update match results via twitter

Day one of ITA Regionals

2010-09-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

Just wrapped up day one of the ITA regional tournament. Those that follow college tennis know this is a special event. It is the only time all year that players are put into one singles and one doubles draw. Makes for a very fun event. Our players have been looking forward to this event since the start of the school year.

We brought 11 players and have 8 into the round of 16. Even more impressive is that all 5 of our doubles teams are into the quarter finals! Its too late for a full write up but here are the results.

Matt Tesmond

1st round defeat Justin McClain (George Fox) 6-4, 7-5

2nd round lost #1 seed Mark Magdaong (Linfield) 6-3, 6-4

Conor Holton Burke (#6 seed)

1st round defeated Micah Spaun (Whitworth)

2nd round defeated Troy Zuroske (Pacific) 6-1, 6-4

Quin Miller

1st round defeated Michael Tieu (UPS)

2nd round defeated #4 seed Michael Baumgartner (Willamette) 7-6, 7-5

Anatas Anatasov

1st Round defeated Tim Wagar (Linfield)

2nd round lost #13 Seed Daniel Redfern (Whitworth)

Etienne Moshevich #7 seed

1st round defeated Will Cooper (Willamette)

2nd round defeated Josiah Jackson (George Fox)

Andrew La Cava #16 Seed

1st round def Michell Davidson (Linfield)

2nd round def Neal Berg (PLU)

Sam Sadeghi

1st round def #12 seed Tal Dewitt (Linfield) 6-0, 6-1

2nd round def Eric Furuya (Pacific) 6-1, 6-2

Jeff Tolman #3 seed

1st round def Colin Barett (Whitworth) 6-3, 6-4

2nd round def Taylor Dickey (PLU) 6-3, 6-0

Steve Roston

1st Round def Brian Burger UPS

2nd Round def #15 seed Brent Kingzett (Linfield) 6-2, 7-6

Chris Bailey #9 seed

1st round def Hector Alcayde (Pacific)

2nd Henry Williams (Whitworth) 6-2, 6-0

Will Huskey

1st round def Jose Reque-Martinez (Pacific)

2nd round lost #2 seed Josh Wong (willamette) 6-2, 6-1

Doubles

Huskey/Roston

1st round def Wager/Dewitt (Linfield) 8-6

2nd round def Massey/Wales (Whitworth) 8-6

Holton-Burker/La Cava #5 seed

1st round def Burger/Murphy (UPS) 8-1

2nd round def Hing/Kinghorn (Pacific) 8-1

Miller/Tesmond

1st round def Berg/Gunstone (PLU)

2nd round def #7 seeds Levein/Lyons (Linfield) 9-8

Bailey/Sadeghi

1st round def #4 seed Baumgartner/Houser (Willamette)

2nd round def Brown/McClain (George Fox)

Tolman/Moshevich #2 seed

1st round bye

2nd round def Barrett/Williams (Whitworth)

Play resumes tomorrow 9am at Willamette University

Time for some tennis!

2010-09-23T22:02:00.001-07:00

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.

Another reason why this event is so much fun is because its the first tennis event of the year. This year will be especially entertaining as we get to go on the road (we have hosted the past two years). Nothing like a road trip to bring a sense of excitement to a tournament. I know everyone on the team is excited to travel and play.

This event is also the first time teams get to check out the rosters from the rest of the conference. Always interesting to see which teams added and lost players.

Speaking of losing players this year certainly marks a changing of the guard for the Whitman tennis team. We lost seven solid players to graduation. In the world of college tennis seven players is basically an entire roster! Luckily the past few years we have had a very deep team and we have seven returning players that have been in our system for a few years. Also I'm very excited about our four new freshman players. From Seattle to California to Bulgaria these boys can play some great tennis. I'm brimming excitement to see how the new players do against the rest of the conference.

This will be the first year in a while that Whitman hasn't had the #1 seed in singles or doubles. We are, however, fortunate to have 5 singles players seeded in the top 16 and two doubles teams in the top 5. Hopefully players can live up to and surpass the seedings.

Singles Draws

Doubles Draws

Below a tournament preview written by Whitman's wonderful SID Dave Holden

WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- In addition to posting 16-0 Northwest Conference records for the past four spring seasons, the Whitman College men's tennis team has also largely dominated the annual fall tournament.

Jeff Tolman

Conor Holton-Burke

While hard hit by graduation last spring, Whitman returns plenty of firepower and hopes to continue its fall mastery at this weekend's USTA/ITA Pacific Northwest Tournament, which takes place at Willamette University in Salem, Ore.

Whitman players have won the last four singles titles at the fall tournament and three of the last four crowns in doubles.

Sophomore Jeff Tolman, who lost in last year's singles final to teammate Matt Solomon (now graduated), is the highest Whitman seed in this weekend's singles bracket. Tolman is seeded No. 3 behind No. 1 Mark Magdaong, a Linfield senior, and No. 2 Jeffrey Wong, a Willamette junior.

Other Whitman players seeded in the 64-player singles bracket are sophomore Conor Holton-Burke (6), senior Etienne Moshevich (7), senior Chris Bailey (9), and freshman Andrew La Cava (16).

Moshevich and Bailey made the singles finals of the 2008 and 2007 fall tournaments, losing in both cases to Solomon.

Etienne Moshevich

Chris Bailey

Other Whitman players entered in the singles bracket this weekend are senior Quin Miller, sophomores Matt Tesmond and Sam Sadeghi, and freshmen Will Huskey, Steven Roston and Anatas Anatasov.

In last year's doubles final, Tolman and Solomon were upset by Pacific Lutheran's Joel Trudel and Justin Peterson, who have both graduated.

Tolman is paired this weekend with Moshevich. They are the No. 2 seeds in the doubles bracket, trailing only Magdaong and his Linfield teammate, Brent Kingzett.

Moshevich teamed with Solomon to win the doubles titles at both the 2008 and 2007 tournaments.

Holton-Burke and La Cava, another of Whitman's tandems in this weekend's doubles bracket, are seeded No. 5.

Whitman has three more duos in the doubles bracket: Miller and Tesmond, Bailey and Sadeghi, and Huskey and Roston.

What a great way to start the year!

2010-09-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

With the first week of classes out the way the men's and women's tennis teams got together for an afternoon of mixed doubles and evening of blackberry picking. The evening was especially sweet (beyond the ripe berries) because the teams traveled to pick berries on Prof Delbert Hutchinson's spread on the South Fork of the Walla Walla River. Hutch was Whitman's 2010 convocation speaker so it was nice for everyone to spend time with him. Hutch's convocation can be found here.

Once the berries were picked (I think a large majority of berries went vine to belly) we convened to the fire ring for conversation and dutch oven fresh blackberry cobbler. Speaking of dutch oven cobbler, here is Hutch's no fail receipe:

warm-up dutch ovens in the fire
melt half a stick of butter in dutch oven
mix box of vanilla cake mix according to directions (one box per oven)
pour cake mix into the oven
pour in berries (the more the better)
put lid on dutch oven, place oven over coals and cover with hot coals
cook for 30 mins turning oven every 10 mins
Enjoy

The fresh blackberry cobbler was absolutely incredible!

Pictures from the evening

Adriel's band releases first album

2010-08-05T20:25:00.000-07:00

First album released by Whitman student band, Dabbles in Bloom

Tuesday, Jul 27, 2010

From left to right: Adriel Borshansky, Rimmy Doowa, Robby Seager, Jonas Myers. Photos courtesy of Dabbles in Bloom.

The popular Whitman College music group, Dabbles in Bloom, has reached a musical milestone with the release of its first album, featuring the combined talents of band membersAdriel Borshansky ’12, Rimmy Doowa ’12, Robby Seager ’13 and Jonas Myers ’13. The album, titled, “Found It,” includes 11 original songs from the “jazz-influenced, indie-pop” band, and is now available for purchase from the iTunes Store, Amazon.com and other online music retailers.

Listen to a track from the CD
“Greetings”

The band’s new release, which features original cover art by Markel Uiru ’11, celebrates the fruitful collaboration of four Whittie musicians — and friends — who truly enjoy creating together. Though Borshansky and Doowa have collaborated musically for more than two years, Seager and Myers joined the group less than six months ago, quickly adding their own layers to the band’s unique, quirky style. “It’s been less than a year, but it feels like we’ve been playing together forever. We all just clicked right away,” Borshansky said.

Borshansky, a Ridgewood, N.J., native who plans to major in religion, is the band’s lead singer, songwriter, guitarist and occasional piano player. Doowa, an economics major from Bangkok, Thailand, sings, develops musical concepts and plays several unique Indian and Thai instruments. On piano, keyboards and occasional bass is Myers, hailing from the Seattle area, who is still determining his major. Also from the Seattle area is Seager, the band’s drummer, who plans to study economics and mathematics.

“I chose Whitman College because of the amazingly diverse, inspired and energetic student body. I joined the band for the same reasons,” Seager said. “Adriel, Rimmy and Jonas all have such compelling, creative energy – and our different backgrounds complement each other musically and personally.

“Practicing with Dabbles in Bloom is similar to Whitman academics: One moment you're enjoying life to the fullest, and the next you realize that the whole time you've actually been getting things accomplished, too!”

In short order, these bright young musicians have swiftly carved out a place in Whitman’s entertainment scene, playing lively concerts at a number of the college’s fraternities and interest house gatherings last year. Though Borshansky will study abroad in Nepal this fall, he said the band will continue making music while he’s away.

“Dabbles in Bloom will definitely storm the campus when I get back this spring,” he said, referring to future concerts, including a large show the band hopes to play in the Reid Campus Center’s Young Ballroom.

While this is the first recorded album for the group, in 2009, Borshansky, with creative support from Doowa, had the opportunity to write and record a solo song for award-winning filmmaker Dana H. Glazer. Borshansky was commissioned to create a song for the soundtrack of “Evolution of Dad,” Glazer’s feature documentary, released in May 2010, about the changing role of fatherhood.

“It was an interesting experience for me,” Borshansky said. “Especially because I had never been asked to write a song for a specific subject, let alone something I couldn’t really relate to.”

The song, titled, “I Stepped Down,” was featured in the film and released in April as Borshansky’s first single. The track also appears on “Found It.”

While Dabbles in Bloom enjoy a growing following of fans, the members work to enjoy their time performing together without putting too much pressure on the future of the band.

“Who knows what will happen? There are infinite directions for us,” Borshansky said. “We’re just waiting to see what happens, and we’re letting our listeners determine that for us.”

Matt Solomon beats Maria Sharapova!!

2010-08-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

Pretty funny story/video. Upon graduation Matt landed a job with IMG and has been working on the WTA Bank of the West tournament all summer. Besides his normal duties, Matt had the opportunity to play Sharapova in a point while dressed up has Bank of the West "Bear". Matt used the opportunity to ham it up a bit. Fortunately his sister took video of the event and put it on youtube.

Check out the video here

Christoph 1st team Academic All-American!

2010-06-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

As a capstone to a stellar academic and athletic career, Whitman College tennis player Christoph Fuchs has earned Academic All-America First-Team honors.

Christoph Fuchs

Fuchs, a four-year mainstay in the Whitman tennis lineup, graduated magna cum laude in late May with honors in his biology major.

The Academic All-America first, second and third teams, sponsored byESPN The Magazine, are selected by the College Sports Information Directors of America.

Fuchs, who was part of three Northwest Conference (NWC) title teams at Whitman, is one of 17 student athletes voted to the men's At-Large Team in the College Division.

The At-Large Team represents a number of sports, including tennis, swimming and golf, while the College Division includes all schools affiliated with NCAA Divisions II and III and the NAIA.

Whitman students have earned Academic All-America honors 10 times since the school began submitting nominations in 2003. Fuchs is the first Whitman athlete, however, to receive first-team recognition at the national level.

More than 30 Whitman athletes have received all-district honors in recent years.

Fuchs travels to Houston, Texas, later this summer to begin medical school studies at the Baylor College of Medicine, which is part of the Texas Medical Center, the largest such center in the world.

In his four seasons at Whitman, Fuchs was part of a men's tennis squad that posted an overall win-loss record of 90-27, which included a 64-0 regular season mark against NWC teams. Whitman advanced to the NCAA Division III national championship tournament in each of those four seasons.

Fuchs made his share of contributions on the tennis courts, winning more than 100 career matches in singles and doubles.

"I want to say how thankful I am to my coach (Jeff Northam), teammates, Whitman athletics, and the Whitman faculty for a wonderful four years on the court and in the classroom," Fuchs said Monday. "I also want to say a special thank-you to my parents who sacrificed so much to help me achieve my goals."

Valerie Fuchs and Dr. Axel Fuchs, who live in La Center, Wash., have home schooled each of their four children. Dr. Fuchs, a graduate of the medical school at Germany's University of Dusseldorf, is an obstetrician-gynecologist.

Christoph Fuchs

Following his sophomore year at Whitman, Fuchs spent a summer as a volunteer nurse's aide at a hospital in Offenburg, Germany. His work ranged from basic patient care to making rounds with doctors and observing surgeries.

A year later, Fuchs received funding from the Whitman Undergraduate Research program to assist with breast cancer research at the University of Lousiville's Brown Cancer Center. His research that summer was the basis for his honors thesis on estrogen receptor protein modifications.

Fuchs was elected a year ago to Phi Beta Kappa, the national academic honor society. While at Whitman, he volunteered at a local AIDS clinic and for the Friends of Walla Walla, a group that mentors at-risk youth.

Last month, Fuchs was named Scholar-Athlete of the Year at the Blue Mountain Sports Awards, an awards program for high school and college student athletes in the Walla Walla Valley. The awards program is run by the Walla Walla Union-Bulletinnewspaper.

Fuchs was eligible for the Academic All-America Team based on his election earlier this spring to the Academic All-District First Team for 11 western states and British Columbia.

A year ago, following his junior season, Fuchs earned Academic All-District recognition and then was voted to the Academic All-America Third Team.

Fuchs is the second Whitman tennis player to earn Academic All-America honors in back-to-year years.Brad Changstrom '05 earned third-team recognition as a junior and senior.

Last fall, following the most prolific soccer scoring season at Whitman in two decades, seniorCorina Gabbert was voted to the Academic All-America Second Team.

Whitman is the top-ranked liberal arts and sciences college in the Northwest, according to the annual U.S. News and World Report survey of colleges and universities.

Since starting its program in 1952, CoSIDA has bestowed Academic All-America honors on more than 15,000 student athletes in all NCAA championship sports.

Congratulations to Charlie Larson

2010-06-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

Hardy congratulations to Whitman tennis alumni Charlie Larson ('99) for receiving his PhD in Biochemistry from Washington State University! Charlie reports that he has "decided to accept a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, MT. I am pretty excited to take the next step in my career and to move out of Pullman. More importantly, RML is one of the top infectious disease labs in the country/world. I’ll be working with Bob Heinzen on Coxiella burnetti (a pathogenic bacteria)".

Now that Charlie is in Hamilton (a great fly fishing area) he might get some unannounced visits from his old college coach!

Reid goes to Dartmouth Medical School!

2010-06-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

I recently received word that Reid Bennett '09 was accepted to Dartmouth Medical school! I hate to sound like a proud parent but that is the third Whitman tennis alumni entering medical school this year -- Christoph Fuchs at Baylor, Thomas Roston at University of British Columbia, and Reid at Dartmouth.

Good luck and congratulations to all three!

Solomon falls in National Tournament

2010-05-30T09:22:00.001-07:00

WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- A lost service game early in the first set proved costly as Whitman College senior Matt Solomon dropped a 6-4, 6-2 decision to Williams College senior Nick Lebedoff in this morning's opening round of the NCAA Division III National Tennis Singles Championship Tournament.

The 32-player singles tournament, taking place at Ohio's Oberlin College, continues through Sunday.

Matt Solomon
"It was a thrill to be invited to this tournament, but I definitely didn't play my best today," Solomon said. "This obviously wasn't the outcome I was expecting and wanted."

The difference in the first set came early, when Solomon dropped his first service game. After that the two players held serve until Lebedoff finished off his 6-4 first-set victory.

"I kept trying to change tactics to get back into the match, but I felt a little off my game the whole way," Solomon said. "I felt good from a physical standpoint, but I wasn't hitting through the ball as well as I can."

Lebedoff advances to play a second-round match today against the survivor of a first-round match between Chris Goodwin (Emory University) and Scott Sundstrom (Luther College).

The tournament continues Saturday with quarterfinal and semifinal matches. The championship finale is set for Sunday.

Solomon, a senior, is one of seven West Coast players -- but the only one from the Pacific Northwest -- invited to the singles championship. Invitations were issued to players based on win-loss records, rankings and strength of opposition.

Solomon, who has played No. 1 singles for Whitman since his sophomore season, led Whitman to a third consecutive Northwest Conference title this spring. He is a two-time NWC Player of the Year and was named the 2010 winner of Whitman's R.V. Borleske Trophy, which is presented annually to the top male athlete on campus.

"What a great season and great career Matt has had," Whitman coach Jeff Northam said. "He's had a huge impact on our team and athletic program in general.

"Our men's tennis program is stronger right now than it's ever been in my many years of coaching, and Matt is a big reason why that's the case."

Solomon is the first Whitman player to compete in the national singles championships since May of 2006, when Steven Ly got an invite to cap his junior season.

Tim Mullin made the national singles tournament in both 2001 and 2002. Mullin and Eric Bartee competed in the doubles championship bracket in 2000.

Solomon got his senior season off to a strong start last fall by winning the ITA's Pacific Northwest NCAA Division III singles title for a third consecutive season. He advanced to the ITA's National Small College Championships, where he won two of his four matches against other regional champs.

Solomon, who graduated from Whitman last Sunday with a degree in economics, starts work next Tuesday with IMG, the world's premier and most diversified sports, entertainment and media company.

Solomon, who is from Los Altos, Calif., will be working in IMG's San Francisco office, helping prepare for 40th annual Bank of the West Classic, which starts July 26 at Stanford University. The classic is the longest-running women-only professional tennis tournament in the world and the first stop of the Olympus U.S. Open Series.

Fuchs Named to ESPN The Magazine's Academic Team!

2010-05-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- Christoph Fuchs, a graduating senior on the Whitman College men's tennis team, has been voted for a second consecutive year to ESPN The Magazine's Academic All-District At-Large First Team.

Christoph Fuchs
Fuchs, who helped Whitman win its third straight Northwest Conference (NWC) title earlier this spring, is one 10 athletes chosen for the men's at-large team in the College Division of District VIII.

The district includes all NCAA Div. II/Div. III and NAIA schools in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, California, Utah, Nevada and Arizona, as well as British Columbia.

The at-large teams represent student athletes in a variety of sports, including golf, skiing, gymnastics, ice hockey, swimming, lacrosse and tennis.

Players on all-district at-large teams from around the nation are now eligible for election to the Academic All-America team. Fuchs was voted to the All-America Second Team a year ago.

The College Sports Information Directors of America administers the nominating and voting process for the Academic All-America program, which is in its 59th year and has honored about 15,000 students at all levels for all recognized NCAA sports.

Fuchs, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa national academic honor society, graduates from Whitman this Sunday and begins medical school studies later this summer at the Baylor College of Medicine. He and three siblings were home schooled by their parents, Valerie and Dr. Alex Fuchs of La Center, Wash.

Christoph Fuchs at Baylor College of Medicine
Fuchs is one of seven graduating seniors on the men's tennis team who sailed through four seasons at Whitman without losing a single regular season match to a Northwest Conference team. Whitman's win-loss record during those four seasons was 64-0.

Fuchs was a consistent winner in his time at Whitman, collecting more than 100 victories in singles and doubles.

A biology major with a minor in chemistry, Fuchs received Whitman Undergraduate Research funding two summers ago to work on breast cancer research at the University of Louisville’s Brown Cancer Center. His research that summer was the basis of his honors thesis on estrogen receptor protein modifications.

In the summer of 2007, Fuchs was a volunteer nurse's aide at a hospital in Offenburg, Germany, as part of a program required of German students for medical school eligibility. Fuchs, who is fluent in German, handled duties ranging from feeding patients and taking vital signs to shadowing physicians on their rounds and assisting with surgeries.

While at Whitman, Fuch has been a volunteer for a local AIDS clinic as well as the Friends of Walla Walla, which mentors at-risk youth.

Earlier this week, Fuchs was named Scholar-Athlete of the Year at the Blue Mountain Sports Awards, an awards program for high school and college student-athletes in the Walla Walla Valley. The awards program is run by the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin newspaper.

Whitman is the top liberal arts & sciences college in the Northwest, according to the annual U.S. News & World Report survey of colleges and universities.

Congratulations Thomas Roston!

2010-05-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

Graduating senior Thomas Roston recently received notice that he was selected to enter the University of British Columbia Medical school! Thomas is very excited to be going back home (Vancouver, BC) to start the next part of his education.

With Christoph Fuchs going to Baylor to this fall that means that two members of the Whitman tennis team class of 2010 will be entering Medical school this fall. It is rare for students to gain admission to medical school immediately upon graduation. Most students end up working for a few years, improving their resume, and MCAT scores before gaining admission to Medical School. It speaks volumes of Thomas's and Christoph's dedication and hard work to get admitted immediately after graduation.

Big congratulations!

Matt Solomon -- R.V. Borleske award!

2010-05-18T11:03:00.001-07:00

WALLA WALLA, Wash. -- Matt Solomon, a two-time Northwest Conference Player of the Year in men's tennis, is the 2010 winner of the R.V. Borleske Trophy, which is presented annually to the top male athlete at Whitman College.

The trophy, which is awarded by a vote of the Whitman coaching staff, recognizes athletic ability and accomplishments, leadership and sportsmanship qualities, and contributions to the campus as a whole.

Matt Solomon

Solomon, playing No. 1 singles and No. 1 doubles, led Whitman to its third straight Northwest Conference title this spring, and to its fourth consecutive 16-0 NWC regular season.

Ranked No. 22 nationally in NCAA Division III, Whitman advanced to the national championship tournament for the fourth time in as many years. A loss in the regional semifinals to No. 3 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps ended Whitman's season with a 20-5 record.

Solomon, however, has as at least one more match left in his college career. He is one of 32 players from around the country invited to play in the NCAA DIII national singles tournament, slated for late this month in Oberlin, Ohio. He is the first Whitman player to make the singles tournament since Steven Ly in 2006.

Solomon got his senior year off to a strong start last September when he won his third straight singles titles at the ITA's Pacific Northwest Fall Tournament. Despite playing with a torn stomach muscle, he then split four matches at the national small college championships, placing seventh and earning ITA All-America honors in singles for a third time.

As a three-time winner of the ITA's PNW doubles title, Solomon is also a three-time ITA All-American in doubles.

After a slow start early this semester, Solomon posted a 12-5 singles record in spring dual matches, which included an 8-2 record against NWC opponents. His only losses in conference came early in the season and were later avenged.

In non-conference play, Solomon split a pair of matches with UC-Santa Cruz No. 1 Bryan Pybas, and lost close decisions to Tommy Meyer and Andrew Giuffrida, the No. 1 players at Pomona-Pitzer and Cal Lutheran, respectively.

Solomon was named NWC Player of the Week three times during the spring season. His latest Player-of-the-Year award, announced at the NWC post-season tournament in April, makes him only the second Whitman player to twice take home the honor.

Whitman's Tim Mullin was a two-time winner earlier this decade. The NWC began giving the award in the early 1990s.

Solomon, who earned All-NWC Second-Team honors as a freshman, was named NWC Player of the Year for the first time at the end of his sophomore season. He took a one-semester leave of absence from Whitman last spring and helped Boise State make the Round of 16 in the NCAA Division I team championships.

Matt Solomon

"As a player Matt is probably Whitman's most decorated male athlete of the past 25 years, but he is also one of the most outstanding young men to ever play tennis here," Whitman tennis coachJeff Northam says.

"He obviously had a tremendous impact on the courts, but the leadership he gave our team was just as important."

Solomon, an economics major, is a "serious student who was recently named to the NWC's Scholar-Athlete Team," Northam adds. "He's been very involved on campus, contributing time to the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, his fraternity, the school newspaper and the Whitman Investment Club. He also took time from his busy schedule to mentor students at a local elementary school."

"Matt has been a very special part of the Whitman community," Northam says. "I can think of no other player who embodies all the characteristics represented by the Borleske Trophy. I just wish Matt could stay at Whitman for four more years to help mentor and inspire his teammates."

Solomon, a graduate of St. Stephen's Episcoal School in Austin, Texas, is the son of Joanand Murray Solomon of Los Gatos, Calif.

The Borleske Trophy honors Raymond V. Borleske, who achieved legendary status as an athlete and later as a coach at Whitman during the first half of the 20th century. He starred on Whitman's football and baseball teams, and he was the first football player from the Northwest to be recognized by Walter Camp's Spaulding Football Guide.

After graduating from Whitman and earning a law degree, Borleske returned to campus in 1915 to begin a coaching career that continued until 1947.

For a complete listing of past Borleske Trophy winners, please click here.

Whitman Athletic Banquet

2010-05-17T06:52:00.000-07:00

Last week was the Whitman athletic banquet. This is a wonderful event where all of Whitman's athletes (about 20% of the student body) gather to celebrate the year in sports. It is very fun to mingle with other teams, see the accomplishments of all Whitman sports, watch the slide/video show, and be apart of the outstanding athlete awards.

The highlight of the evening is Whitman's version of the "ESPies." Student-athletes are nominated in different categories and the coaching staff votes for a winner. Tennis players were nominated for the following awards:

Freshman male athlete of the year: Jeffrey Tolman

Sophomore male athlete of the year: Conor Holton-Burke

Junior male athlete of the year: Etienne Moshevich, Chris Bailey

Senior male athlete of the year: Christoph Fuchs

Borleske award: Matt Solomon

Matt Solomon won the coveted Borleske award. This award is giving to the outstanding male athlete/leader/student at Whitman. Matt certainly earned this award -- besides being Whitman's most decorated modern athlete (3 time singles All-American, 3 time doubles All-American, 2 time NWC Player of the Year), he volunteers his times at local elementary schools, has been active on SAAC (student athletic advisory council), is business manager for the school newspaper, CFO for WIC (Whitman investment club), and even performed in the Mr Whitman competition. Wow, Matt has done it all and is deserving of this very prestigious award!

Kudos to Christoph Fuchs and Conor Holton-Burke for being listed among the top 5 GPA's. It makes me proud to think that two tennis players were listed among the top 5 student athlete GPA's at Whitman!

Speaking of academics, a number of Whitman players were named to the NWC All-Academic team: Matt Solomon, Etienne Moshevich, Chris Bailey, Christoph Fuchs, Conor Holton-Burke, and Thomas Roston (hopefully I didn't forget anyone). It speaks volumes about the dedication of the men's tennis team when 5 of our top 6 players have a GPA over a 3.5!

Lastly the team was nominated and received the George Ball Award for Sportsmanship. This is given to a team that competes with class and is supportive of other teams on campus. Absolutely incredible to win the award named after the man who has given so much time and guidance to our team!

Squirrel's Season Stymied

2010-05-15T08:07:00.001-07:00

Our foray into the national tournament was ended at the hands of the #3 team in the nation and host Claremont. In doubles we never got our teeth into #2 and #3 doubles and quickly went down breaks. All the doubles ended with a minute of each other..first off was #3 Christoph Fuchs/Conor Holton-Burke who lost 8-4, next off was our number #2 team of Nadeem Kassam/Jeffrey Tolman who also lost 8-4, our #1 team of Matt Solomon/Etienne Moshevich had a several chances to break but ended up losing 8-6.

Down 0-3 against the #3 team in the nation isn't the way to start the singles. We had plenty of fight and spunk but couldn't pull out any singles victories. At #3 ET was a few points from winning his match (6-2, 5-1) but we dropped two singles matches (#2 Jeffrey Tolman and #6 Conor Holton-Burke) sealing the match 0-5.

I'm beginning to feel a bit jinxed about the national tournament. Each of the past 4 years our loses have been at the hands of the eventual regional champion (yesterday CMS defeated #6 UC Santa Cruz to win the West Regional).

Interesting story for the trip. Because of the short turn around time between team selection and the start of play there wasn't a flight available with enough seats for the entire team. To make the trip work Women's coach John Hein drove us to Pasco where part of the team was going to fly Pasco->Seattle->Ontario and the other part was going to fly Pasco->Denver->Ontario. However the Seattle flight was canceled due to mechanical problems. We were able to get four members of the team onto the Denver flight but three players had to stay in Pasco. Lucky Nadeem, ET, and Adriel all have extensive travel experience and were able to work their way to Ontario. However the trio didn't arrive until midnight which didn't allow them any practice time after a long day of travel.

Thus concludes the team season for the Fighting Squirrels. Great year for the team -- we once again won over 20 matches, went undefeated in conference play, won the NWC team tournament, and advanced to the NCAA tournament.

On the road again

2010-05-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

Wow talk about a crazy couple days! Have a lot to tell about Whitman tennis: athletic awards, dinner with President Bridges, NCAA tournament preview, article on Christoph and more! Over the next couple days I'll try to an update on the team.

We (at least most of us) are currently waiting at the Pasco airport to fly to Claremont for a 4-team regional playoff. The NCAA, in their wisdom, decided to have a 4-team regional event (there are 42 teams total) that has the #3 team in the nation (Claremont), #5 team (Cal Lutheran), #6 (UC Santa Cruz) and us at #22...kind of a brutal region. At least one other regional event only has 1 ranked team.

At the last minute the NCAA also deviated from the published Friday-Saturday schedule and moved our tournament to Thursday-Friday. This has created some travel issues for us and have had to split the team into two different flights today. Even with the travel headaches and rushed scheduling we are looking forward to the opportunity of proving ourselves against the best teams in the nation.

We are scheduled to play at 11am tomorrow and I'll try to twitter match updates as I can. Sorry for any spelling or grammar errors in this post but we are getting ready to board the plane!

Waiting

2010-05-05T09:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts but we are currently in limbo as we wait to see where the NCAA will send us for nationals. At this point all we know is the NCAA has to fly us to some regional tournament next weekend. The past two years we have been shipped to California, three years ago we were shipped out to Indiana, and before that we traveled to Texas.

The NCAA committee meets all day Sunday and I should get a call that evening with our destination. I'll post the location and match-ups as soon as I know!

Wrapping up the Ojai

2010-04-25T09:43:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts the past couple days. With individual tournaments the days are long (starting before 6am) and with players playing at different times and sites its pretty much none stop all day. Good news for the tournament is everyone won a match. Jeffrey started us off by winning against the #3 from Pomona 6-4, 4-6, 6-4. He was down 0-3 in the 3rd before rallying for the victory. Later in the day he lost to Willamette's Josh Wong 6-4, 6-1. I was impressed with the play of Wong this weekend and I imagine I will see many Wong vs Tolman battles in the coming years. Nadeem lost his 1st match to the #5 from UCSC 6-3, 6-1. Matt had a bye in the 1st round then defeated a player from CMS, the #2 from Pomona (6-2, 4-6, 6-4) and then lost to the #3 from UC Santa Cruz in the quarters.

In doubles Nadeem and Jeff defeated a CMS team before losing to the #1 team from UC Santa Cruz (this team is probably the best tadem in the nation). Jeff and Nadeem played well and had chances to make it a pretty close match.

Our flights aren't out until this evening so we currently hanging out Robert Rye '08 (currently coaching at Chapman).

At the Ojai!

2010-04-22T20:02:00.000-07:00

We are currently in Southern CA getting ready for the Ojai. The Ojai is a very special event..in fact I think it is the oldest amateur tournament in the nation. The tournament has draws for juniors, college players and even a pro-draw. Its a special playing opportunity for the Whitties. Tomorrow morning Matt Solomon (#4 seed), Jeffrey Tolman (#9 seed) and Nadeem Kassam start singles play. Later in the afternoon Jeffrey and Nadeem play doubles.

Here is a link to the singles draw

Here is a link to the doubles draw

I'll try to twitter match updates during the day tomorrow.

Tonight was a very special night as we had the opportunity to have dinner with Nick Dupuis '03. Nick just finished his PhD in Chemistry from UC Santa Barbara. Big news from Nick is his getting married this summer to his Whitman sweetheart! So big congratulations to Dr Dupuis!

NWC Tournament Champions!

2010-04-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

Yes! We finished up an undefeated conference season by winning the NWC team tournament. This is a very important tournament as the winner gets an AQ (automatic qualifying) spot in the NCAA III team tournament (May 14-16).

One of the many things I love about Whitman is the institutional support of athletics. Our program is well funded and we get the opportunity to travel extensively to compete against the best teams in the nation. This is, without a doubt, one of the reasons our players improve and the tennis program continues to improve (also one of the reasons our team chemistry is so unbelievable but that is another story). This season three of our losses have been to teams ranked in the top 10 and the fourth loss was to a team that started the year at #11. In all those matches we were competitive and everyone on the team knows if we play just a little better we can win those matches. I strongly feel that has a team, as a player, and as a coach one doesn't improve unless they challenge themselves against better opponents.

I'm convinced one the reasons we defeated a very strong PLU team and up and coming Willamette team in the conference tournament is because of our spring break trip. Earlier in the year we defeated a very good Pomona team (top 20 in the nation at the time) in Santa Cruz. In that match we won at #1 and #2 doubles. However #3 doubles struggled and ended up dropping a close match. That win completely energized the Pomona team: they knew they were back in the match and were excited to start the singles. We, on the other hand, were a bit deflated. Its a strange feeling, even though we were going into the singles with a 2-1 lead we were also going into the singles after dropping the last match and the team was a bit deflated. In the NWC tournament we were able to draw on that past experience, know what to expect and manage our energy going into the singles. Against both PLU and Willamette we won two of the doubles but dropped the last doubles match.

Against Willamette we came out came out smoking at #1 doubles. Matt and Etienne are playing good doubles and their energy is unbelievable. Against Willamette I think they won the first seven games before winning 8-1. The match was much closer that the score with quite a few of the games went to deuce. In fact they finished mere moments before #3 doubles won 8-5. Speaking of #3 doubles after a disappointing performance against PLU I decided to mix up that team. It is a bit of a risk putting together a team that hasn't played together (not even in practice) but I thought Jeffrey and Conor would make a good team and more importantly have good chemistry and even better energy. Kudos to Conor for "coming off the bench" to play with Jeffrey and winning 8-5. Unfortunately Quin and Christoph again didn't play well and lost 8-5. The "quintoff" combination had been rock solid this year not dropping a conference match all year; however this weekend they lost both of their matches. Both Quin and Christoph are very competitive driven young men and I'm sure they will draw on this experience to make them better players and a better team.

Just like Friday (and against Pomona) we are starting up 2-1 but dropped the last doubles match. In singles we came out fired up, ready to play and it showed in our attitude and our performance. One thing that is a bit a strange about playing the finals at the Yakima tennis club is we play 1-4 on 4-lower courts and 5 & 6 on their upper courts (which are 400 yards away). Certainly this is not an ideal situation because everyone wants to play together. However it is better than making #5 and #6 wait and perhaps not getting a chance to play if the team match is clinched before they can take the court.

The top four all start solid and we are up in all the matches. With the top four in charge I go to the upper courts to check on #5 and #6. As I'm walking up to the courts I see Christoph come to the net, put away a volley and then reach across the net to shake hands with his opponent. After a disappointing weekend of doubles I'm very proud of how Christoph responded...he was incredibly positive in his singles. His 6-1, 6-0 victory gave us a 3-1 lead. Christoph has been a great leader this year. He is very goal orientated and that attitude has rubbed off on our team. At #6 Conor was seeing his first singles action of the weekend (on Friday the team match was clinched before he could play). Conor is one of the reasons our team has improved over the course of the season. He works as hard as anyone I have ever had on a team and he pushes those around him. Every successful team I have been a part of has had to similar two components -- a strong push from the lower part of the line-up and leadership at the top. Conor is that push, his hard work inspires everyone and forces everyone to get better. Conor finishes his singles a few moments after Christoph with a 6-3, 6-2 victory giving us a 4-1 lead.

If Conor is our push then Matt is our leader -- our warrior at the top. I can't begin to explain the feeling I get when I think of Matt's improvement and maturity during his time at Whitman. His freshman year he dropped his match at #4 in the conference finals. Now he is our #1 player, ranked #6 in the West Region, and was just named NWC Most Valuable Player. Matt is also the leader of the team: everyone looks to him for guidance and advice, and they feed off of his success. He has also shown the younger members of our team how to train, how to work, how to act, and how to compete. Its funny on teams how the next generation of players benefits from the earlier generations. Matt certainly benefited from a strong senior class his freshman year. Now Matt has shown the younger players how to be leaders and I'm sure his legacy will be felt for years on the Squirrel team. Matt was up 6-1, 5-2 (match point) when the team match was decided.

Our Lion (Etienne) has also been a major reason for our success this year. Sometimes I think he has a heart big enough for the entire team. I've never had a player that does more to fire up his team that ET. His booming "lets go Whitman" and fiery attitude is special and inspiring. ET is the player that a coach loves to have and hates to play against. He is going to be fired up and fire up those around him no matter the situation. He is also the player that is not going to show any weakness, lose his fight, or stop trying to motivate his teammates no matter his score or the team score. His passion, his fight and his energy fuels our team. Our Lion had his hands full at #3 singles but was up 6-3, 3-1 when the match was halted.

At #4 Chris was beginning to regain his form. He would be the first to admit he has been in a slump and hasn't been playing confident tennis. Chris's game is based around his punishing flat groundstrokes. However those same punishing groundstrokes can go awry when he gets tight. It was nice to see Chris start to crack his forehand again. More importantly, at least in my mind, was to see Chris being positive on court. Bails is one of the nicest young men I have ever been around and he is a big part of the glue that bonds our team. Sometimes though, Chris tends to be negative on court and dwell on a poor shot. Over the weekend Chris more positive with himself, lifting his teammates, and enjoying the competition. Chris was up 6-3, 1-2 when the match was decided.

Jeffrey Tolman clinched our match with a very good 6-4, 6-3 win over one of Willamette's talented freshman. I'm so proud of Jeffrey's growth this year. He has had an incredibly rough year losing a dear friend. I know as well as anyone Jeffrey's struggles this year and I'm proud of the adversity he has overcome. I'm also proud of how he has put his game together at the end of the year. Jeffrey possesses every shot in the book and can play amazing tennis. But earlier in the year he tended to play a great set and then immediately drop the second set (sometimes very quickly). This weekend he took care of business winning both his singles matches in straight sets (both against very good opponents). He also won both of his doubles matches with different partners. I find it fitting, and rewarding, that Jeffrey clinched the team match and propelled us into the national tournament.

Kudos to coach Kraul and the Willamette team. They showed incredible improvement this year and look to become one of the better teams in the conference. Under Kraul's leadership and coaching this team should continue its improvement and make our conference even better. Speaking of coaching well deserved NWC Coach of the Year honors to our womens Coach John Hein. He has done an amazing job with our women's team and its telling that the women's coaches voted him Coach of the Year.

Whitman 5 Willamette 1

This coming weekend Matt, Jeffrey and Nadeem will represent Whitman at the prestigious Ojai tournament in Southern California.

Thanks to the huge Whitman "family" that came out to support us this weekend. The women's team hung around after their matches to watch us play. The many families that came out to watch us play -- the Fuchs, Moshevichs, Pat Burke, Bailys and the Millers. Thank you to the Whitmann Athletic Director Dean Snider for making the trek to Yakima to watch us play in the finals. And thanks to the Whitman W Club for hosting an alumni dinner for all the players, parents, grandparents, coaches, alumni and friends after the conference tournament. Not sure how many other programs have alumni events after tournaments/matches but they are great...thanks to the Adkison's for hosting this wonderful event. Annie Kunkel-Patterson for an unbelievable, amazing, delicious dinner on Friday night .. and for the Fighting Squirrel cookies! Dan Wilson great to see you and congratulations on the engagement!

Woo Woo into the Conference Finals

2010-04-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry this is going to be a very short note: its 11pm already and we have an early day tomorrow. This afternoon in the NWC semi finals we faced a very tough PLU team. Even though PLU went into the tournament as the #4 seed they were arguably one of the hottest teams in the conference. In the two weeks prior to the NWC tournament they defeated both Linfield and Willamette (#2 and #3 seeds).

Our match was scheduled to start at 3:30pm, but our womens team had a GREAT win over #2 seed Linfield. I'm so proud of the women and coach Hein's effort. They are playing in the conference finals at noon tomorrow...will be fun since we will be playing together!

Doubles we started off way too tight. We were up early in all the match only to see those leads evaporate. At #1 doubles Matt and ET started off strong going up 3-0 but the PLU leveled the match at 4-4. At that point it was all Matt and ET as they rattled off 4 games to win 8-4. At #3 Jeffrey and Nadeem played one of the strangest matches of the year. Jeffrey played well and Nadeem not so well. They were able to withstand some adversity winning 8-6. At #2 Quin and Christoph played a bit too tight and ended up losing 8-6. We didn't play as well as we would like and its strange how we felt "bad" going into singles up 2-1.

In singles ET gave us a 3-1 advantage with a 6-2, 6-1 victory. At #1 Matt lost the 1st set 6-4 but rebounded to go up 4-2 in the second. At #2 singles Jeffrey won the first set 6-4 but was down 0-3. At #4 Chris was down a break with PLU serving at 5-3 when.....it got too dark to play. The Yakima Tennis Club only has 4 lit courts and we were put in a holding pattern as we waited for Willamette and Linfield to finish their match. Must of the change in courts or playing under the lights because once we started playing again it was all Whitman. Matt closes out the 2nd 6-2 and goes up in the 3rd. Chris rebounds from being a break down and wins the 1st set 7-6 (7-1) and Jeffrey levels his match at 4-4. Then the rains down down and we are forced to take another break! After the break Jeffrey wins his match 6-4, 7-5 giving us a 4-1 lead. Matt Solomon finalized the win with a 4-6, 6-2, 6-2 win at #1 singles.

Tomorrow we play in the conference finals at noon against #3 seed Willamette. As usual I'll try to twitter updates.

Conference update

2010-04-16T13:45:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone just a quick update. We are currently at the Conference tournament awaiting our 3:30pm match against PLU. PLU defeated Whitworth 5-4 in a nailbaiting match. Tournament is slightly behind schedule so I would imagine a 4pm start time. Also the men's coaches voted and agreed to cancel the 3rd/4th and 5th/6th place match. So its a one and done event for teams that lose.

I'll update more later. I'll try to twitter updates during the match.

16-0 conference season

2010-04-12T10:35:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we wrapped our regular season conference schedule with a double-header sweep of Whitworth in Spokane. Double-headers are typically associated with baseball but in an effort to save dates (and travel) we have been playing double-headers with Whitworth the past couple years .. alternating between Spokane and Walla Walla.

I must admit it was a bit of a strange feeling going into the matches at Whitworth. On Saturday PLU defeated Linfield 6-3 giving us the 2010 conference crown regardless of our results on Sunday. As a team we wanted to "win" the conference title by defeating Whitworth rather than another team losing. But that is the nature of sports.

In our first match against Whitworth I was planning on resting a few guys and splitting our singles up depending on how the doubles progressed. However Whitworth had other ideas and submitted their second squad into the line-up. After seeing this I pulled guys out of the singles line-up and played a different group of guys. This turned out to be fantastic because everyone got a chance to play on Sunday.

In the first match we won 9-0 without dropping a set. You can see the box scores here. Note the Whitworth SID got the #1 and #2 doubles doubles teams from Whitworth reserved.

After a quick lunch break we started match #2 with more normal line-ups. Going into the match we opted to rest #1 Matt Solomon, #3 Etienne Moshevich and #5 Christoph Fuchs. With half of our singles line-up out and our standout #1 doubles on the bench we knew we were in for a battle. Speaking of doubles, for this match Jeffrey Tolman and Nadeem Kassam played #1 doubles (they normally play #3). For the record Whitworth has played good doubles this year. In fact this year they have been up after doubles against the #2 team and #3 team in our conference (Linfield and Willamette).

I was quite pleased with our doubles results. At #1 Jeffrey and Nadeem won 8-5. This should give them some confidence going into the conference tournament know that they can beat any team in the conference. At #2 Christoph and Quin completed an undefeated conference season winning 8-6. I believe the Whitworth #2 doubles team had only lost 1 conference match going into Sunday. At #3 Thomas and Conor played unbelievable tennis winning 8-1.

Singles had its up and downs. At #1 Jeffrey played another streaky match. He lost the 1st set 6-2 (after going down 0-3 two breaks) but wins the 2nd 6-1. In the 3rd set he again goes down 0-3 but ends up winning 7-6 in the 3rd (7-2). Speaking of streaky Chris had a streaky match of his own. He was up 4-2 in the 1st but drops that set 6-4. Like Jeff he wins the 2nd set 6-1 but after being up in the 3rd he loses 7-5. Very disappointing loss for Chris.

Conor was very excited to be playing and even more excited when he found out he was playing #3! Conor had a wonderful spring break trip defeating the #6 from Pomona, the #5 from UC Santa Cruz and lost in a match tie-break to Cal Lu. Unfortunately he was sick last weekend and wasn't able to play in our last home matches. Against Whitworth he made up for lost time being the 1st off the court with a 6-2, 6-3 victory.

Much like Conor, Nadeem is excited to be back playing and posted a very good 6-4, 6-4 win over Whitworth's solid #4 player. Good for Nadeem to get through this competitive match. At #5 Sam won 7-6, 6-4 and Quin won 6-3, 6-1 at #6.

All in all a very good effort from the Fighting Squirrels. Certainly shows the depth of our team defeating the #5 team in our conference without our #1 doubles and half of our singles line-up.

Whitman 8 Whitworth 1

With the regular conference season wrapped up we start the NWC conference tournament on Friday in Yakima. We go into the tournament as the #1 seed and face the winner of PLU/Whitworth Friday at 3:30.

Last home match of the year

2010-04-04T08:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the last home match for the Fighting Squirrels. Fittingly, the match was against the #2 team in the conference Linfield. We always know matches against Linfield are going to be intense affairs: they are well coached and play good doubles. Last month we defeated Linfield 7-2 on their home courts (losing at #1 doubles and #5 singles). That victory was a bit tainted as Linfield was missing their standout senior Kyle Anderson. So far this season Anderson has only lost to our own Matt Solomon (in the fall) and UC Santa Cruz #2 player (in 3 sets).

As I mentioned above, Linfield plays good doubles so we had to start strong to take control of the team match. The Squirrels started off by quickly going up two breaks at #1 (Matt and ET) and #3 (Jeffrey and Nadeem). Jeffrey and Nadeem were the first ones off with a 8-5 victory. Matt and ET were up 5-2 when the Linfield team really hit their stride. Credit to the Linfield duo for battling hard and playing some good doubles at the end of the match. Turning point of the match -- ET serving at 6-4 and comes back from 0-40. Lose that game and Linfield has the momentum and is back on serve. The Lion (I call ET the lion because he has a huge heart) put in 3 straight 1st serves and was able to hold. Matt and ET end up winning 8-5 giving us a 2-0 lead. Quin and Christoph had a battle at #2 doubles. Late in the match they were down a break but managed to break back and force a tie breaker. In the breaker they had great intensity and crashed hard on the net. Christoph finished off the tie breaker with an ace to win 7-1. Sweep of the doubles and we are up 3-0 going into singles.

Anyone that follows DIII tennis knows that a sweep of doubles almost always means a team victory. Going up 3-0 means that the opposing team needs to win 5 of the singles matches and against an equally matched team this is all but impossible. As a side note hats off to PLU who last night accomplished that very feat against Willamette -- they were down 0-3 after doubles and ended up winning 5-4.

We certainly had momentum going into the singles. I'm sitting on the court looking across the 4 indoor courts at these scores: #1 Matt is up 6-1, #2 Jeffrey is up 5-0, #3 ET is up 6-1, and #4 Chris is up 4-1. Such a lead was simply too great. Matt is playing very well...each match he is getting stronger and playing better. Yesterday he beat the #8 ranked player in the region 6-1, 6-2. At #3 the Lion clinched the team match 6-1, 6-4. However #3 and #4 both split sets. At #3 Jeffrey had a very streaky match. To start the match he wins 5 straight games and wins the 1st set 6-2. In the 2nd set he goes down 0-4 but manages to bring the set to a breaker (losing 7-3). In the match breaker Jeffrey regains his focus winning 10-4. Unfortunately Chris wasn't so lucky at #4 singles losing 3-6, 6-3, 10-6.

With the match clinched, Christoph and Nadeem took the courts at #5 and #6. Christoph had a rematch against the opponent that beat him a month ago. Yesterday Christoph was victorious 6-2, 6-2. It is a pleasure to see Nadeem playing after nursing a sore arm all year. He is enjoying his time on court and playing with great enthusiasm. Nadeem gave us 8-1 victory with his 6-2, 6-3 win.

Whitman 8 Linfield 1

Today's win gave us at least a share of the conference 2010 conference title and we clinched the #1 seed at the NWC conference tournament. Next weekend we play Whitworth (doubleheader) and if we win one of those matches we are outright conference champions!

This was the last weekend of home matches for seven seniors. Over the course of the year these seniors have provided incredible leadership for the team. Our season started off very shaky after getting blown out at home by the #1 ranked UC Santa Cruz and the following weekend narrowly defeating PLU 5-4 (we were down 2-4 and had to win the final three matches in 3-sets). I remember getting back late from Tacoma and venting to the team about our recent performances. I believe that weekend was the defining moment for the team. Since then we have played with passion and purpose. I love how the team (and individuals) are playing better with each passing week.

Consider our scores with opponents this year:

1st match Whitman 5 PLU 4 -- 2nd match Whitman 9 PLU 0

1st match Whitman 1 UCSC 8 -- 2nd match Whitman 3 UCSC 6

1st match Whitman 7 Linfield 2 -- 2nd match Whitman 8 Linfield 1 (and Linfield had their standout senior back for this match)

1st match Whitman 7 Willamette 2 -- 2nd match Whitman 8 Willamette 1 (on their home courts)

I look forward to seeing how the rest of our season unfolds.

Senior Day!!!!

2010-04-03T08:50:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we honored our seven seniors before our home match against Pacific. To say these seniors have had an impact on Whitman and the tennis program is an understatement. They have set the bar incredibly high for any sports team at Whitman. These seven seniors have never lost a regular season conference team match (60+ and counting), have qualified for three straight NCAA III appearances, won two conference titles, been an ITA All-Academic team for three straight years and have a team GPA around a 3.5!

Below are some stats (going into the match) about the seven seniors:

Thomas Roston

Major: Bio-Chemistry, Bio-Physics, and Molecular Biology

Hometown: West Vancouver, Canada

31-4 Singles

25-3 Doubles

56-7 Overall

Thomas's winning percentage of 88% ranks #1 on the Whitman all-time list

Thomas is looking to attend medical school

David Deming

Major: Economics

Hometown: Brush Prairie, WA

39-10 Singles

22-4 Doubles

61-44 Overall

David's 81% winning percentage is #2 on Whitman's all-time list

David is currently applying to Law school

Jasper Follows

Major: French

Hometown: West Vancouver, Canada

24-13 Singles

41-13 Doubles

65-26 Overall

Played in the 2008 NCAA III team tournament

Jasper is hoping to attend Dental School in Canada

Nadeem Kassam

Major: Economics

Hometown: West Vancouver, Canada

29-15 Singles

44-27 Doubles

73-42 Overall

Played in the 2009 NCAA III team tournament

Jake Cappel

Major: Economics

Hometown: Chicago, IL

51-20 Singles

35-24 Doubles

86-44 Overall

Ranks 7th on singles wins

Ranks 11th in overall wins

Played in the 2009, 2008, 2007 NCAA team tournament

2nd team all-conference 2009, 2008

Christoph Fuchs

Major: Biology

Hometown: La Center, WA

40-20 singles

54-26 Doubles

94-46 Overall

Ranks 7th in doubles wins

Ranks 8th in overall wins

Played in the NCAA team tournament 2009, 2007

Inducted in Phi Beta Kappa

ESPN Academic All-American

Attending Baylor College of Medicine in the fall.

Matt Solomon

Major: Economics

Hometown: Los Gatos, CA

61-35 Singles

61-33 Doubles

122-68 Overall

Ranks 5th in singles wins

Ranks 6th in doubles wins

Tied 5th in overall wins

2007 2nd team All-Conference

2008 Conference Player of the Year

3 time All-American in singles

3 time All-American in doubles

Recently accepted a position with IMG.

Obviously these seven have been instrumental in our success the past four years. We will all be sad to see them leave, but they will always be apart of our family.

To honor the seniors they made up the singles line-up against Pacific (except Jake who couldn't play so he helped coach). The seniors played "Senior Day" with energy, passion, skill and did not drop a set to Pacific.

Whitman 9 Pacific 0

We take to the courts at 1pm today to face Linfield. Should be a competitive match today as Linfield is currently in 2nd place in the conference standings. We beat them earlier in the year 7-2 in McMinnville, OR but they were missing one of their key players. It should be a good match today.

Wrapping up spring break

2010-03-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry for no post after the Redlands match but I actually went a couple days without an internet connection. Its been several days since the match and much of the match has faded from memory. We were at the tail end of the a very long road trip and played very tired. Our only points came from Matt Solomon who is playing great tennis (he won at 1 singles and 1 doubles).

Redlands 7 Whitman 2

The rest of the post (which I suspect will be lengthy) is my recollections of the trip. Its more for myself than anything, but I figure some parents and alumni might find it amusing. If you don't want to read my thoughts about the trip stop now...

OK - you have been warned!

If the Whitman 2010 Spring Break trip wasn't the longest trip in Whitman Tennis history, it surely is near the top. I know some teams fly further or go to exotic locations but I don't think any team has spent 14 days on the road (14 for me, less for the players) or drove 3600 miles! Yes that is not a misprint, I drove 3600 miles in two weeks.

What an absolute blast! I have to say it is so much fun being together for such an extended amount of time. Some might think it's crazy to spend so much time together in a bus. I, however, think its crazy not to spend that time together. In the bus, with just the team, it's amazing the conversations, the experiences and the shared values of the team. In the bus guys can be guys -- laugh out loud, cheer, scream at the top of their lungs, be crude or just be plain silly. It's just not possible to have the same experience in a plane or a shorter trip. Let me state, a trip of this magnitude wouldn't be possible without a quality group of guys. We have a special family and really enjoy each other company.

I'm sure my coaching colleagues think I'm crazy doing a two-week driving trip. So why undertake such a trip? One of the reasons is our wacky conference schedule. In the NWC conference (9 teams) we are required to play a silly double-round robin. In DIII teams are limited to 20 dates of competition. Having to play 16 matches conferences really eats up the schedule and drastically limits what a team can do outside of a conference schedule. If a team plays a couple non-conference matches and a couple fall events there are no available dates for a spring break trip. As I've told my conference colleagues we are the only conference in the nation that requires a double-round robin. It is wasteful of dates and resources, and hampers the ability of good teams to schedule out-of-conference opponents, which is critical for national exposure.

One way around the problem with dates is to play multiple matches on a single day. Under NCAA regulations it is the number of days played NOT the number of matches. The past few spring breaks we have been able to reschedule our Portland matches to the first part of spring break. Since we typically play these matches on Monday and Tuesday we take all the members of the team, divide into two different teams and play two matches at the same time. Besides saving dates it also frees up three weekends during the season when we would've traveled to Portland to play. It is certainly worthwhile to spend a couple days at the start of break to knock out the five Portland matches and then have three weekends during the season free. This year the conference schedule had us hosting PLU and UPS so we ended up playing seven conference matches in five days.

Another reason I like to drive is so the entire team can go on spring break. It is financially prohibitive to fly 15 people during spring break. Even if it were feasible to fly 15 people, I would be faced with the logistical problem of renting multiple vans with underage drivers.

Another plus of driving is the housing. As a team we are blessed with many supportive parents and friends that open their homes to the team. It is SO much more fun to be in a big house together than spread out in hotel rooms. I'm also sure that my AD appreciates the cost difference between hotels and housing. I shudder to think to what hotel rooms what 10 days of hotel rooms would cost.

Our first few nights on the road we stayed at the Fuchs and Deming households in the Portland area. During this section of the trip Coach Ann had a group of players at the Demings and I was with the rest at the Fuchs. Man, talk about living in luxury! The Demings and Fuchs treated us incredibly well. I think Valerie Fuchs should start her own home gardening, entertaining and food magazine! Martha Stewart move over because Valerie can show you a few things!

The first Tuesday of the trip was one of our longest days of the trip. We left the Fuchs house at 7:45am to head over to University of Portland to play doubles against the Pilots. Wasn't a counting match but was certainly fun (and beneficial) to play high level doubles. Following the match we headed back to the Fuchs house to shower, pack-up our belongings, load the van and head out to Forest Grove to meet up with the rest of the team (Coach Ann) and play Pacific. After the match we combined both group of guys into the 14 passenger bus and drove to Eugene to spend the night.

Wednesday was our longest team drive of the trip -- Eugene to Sacramento (8-9 hours). Here is a trick I have learned to make drives more enjoyable. I bring an DC-to-AC inverter and a wireless router. As we are driving down the highway the guys can play video games and/or share music/movies. Pretty interesting listening to the guys play against each other in Starcraft (Jeffrey was the master). If a power source and wireless router were key for the guys, my Droid was my must-have object. I've had the argument with several people but there is no doubt in my mind that the Droid is superior to the iPhone. (editor's note: you are full of it, husband.) With the Droid I could speak into the phone to get real-time navigation ... say "navigate Redlands University" and the phone links into google maps to show the best route, gives turn-by-turn navigation, shows traffic, shows time to destination, and gives street level photo views of each turn...wow! The Droid also has voice-dialing and search. I found this absolutely critical when driving and trying to find some information or make a call (using a head set of course). The Droid uses googlemaps and with a press of the button shows items of interest (eateries) near you. The Droid, like an iPhone, is an outstanding music player, and I listened to A LOT of music during the trip. Without a doubt my MVO (most valuable object) was my Droid.

While on the subject of objects here are some other valuable objects that made a long trip work. Another reason to drive: it was easier to transport a stringing machine. Being on the road for two weeks and playing 11 matches means a lot of broken strings. We spent a fair amount of time stringing rackets in the evenings, before matches and at times during matches. A Leatherman's tool - I always try to travel with a Leatherman and this trip was no different. I used it to slice up fruit and string rackets. I also felt like MacGyver JR when I took apart the 12 volt electrical system in the van trying to find an electrical short. The bus has 12 volt outlets above each seat that, for some reason, were shorting out. It took me about an hour but I dismantled the 12-volt system and managed to find the electrical short. Without the 12-volt plug-ins the guys couldn't charge computers, plug in phones or music players. Another "must have" item was a bottle of hand sanitizer. The guys laughed a bit but every time they got into the van I squirted sanitizer into their hands. In past spring break trips it seems that when one person gets sick, the entire team gets sick. This trip, Christoph started out sick and I was the only other one to get sick. Not sure if it was the sanitizer but I'll be using a bottle of sanitizer on future trips. Lastly a having a cooler of food is key. Guys get hungry, and get hungry at different times so I made it a point of having a cooler full of lunch meat, cheeses, condiments and a box of bread, bagels and fruit. Full bellies mean happy men.

In summary if anyone is planning on taking a 3,600 mile, 2-week trip with 14 players here are items to take:

Stringing machine
Leathermans tool
Hand sanitizer
Cooler + food
A Motorola Droid (or lesser iPhone)
DC inverter
Wireless Router
sleeping bags (we traveled with 12)
Air Mattresses (we traveled with 10)
Air pumps for mattresses (we had two)
internet connection and Hotwire.com for hotel rooms

Wednesday was a beautiful drive through OR and Nor CAL. The views of Mount Shasta and surrounding area was absolutely glorious. We ended up spending Wednesday night in downtown Sacramento.

Thursday we left Sacramento, drove to Los Gatos and checked into Hotel Solomon. After unpacking at the Solomon's we headed over to the Stanford campus to hit some balls. Big thanks to Stanford coaches Coupe and Whitlinger for letting us practice on the main Stanford courts. Was fun for the guys to play at one of the best college facilities in the nation.

We had a couple wonderful days at the Solomon house -- great food (yes Mama Bear, you are a great cook), Rock Band on a Play Station, billiards (I was the champion), swimming, and wonderful company. I think everyone thought I was losing my marbles, but I slept outside each night and had wonderful, restful evenings.

Sunday was another very long day. We had to get up early (7am) and drive to Santa Cruz. On Sunday we had an brutal double-header playing Cal Lutheran and UC Santa Cruz. Originally we were going to play Cal Lu on their home courts later in the week, but since they were in Santa Cruz (and only playing 1 match) we decided to move the match to Santa Cruz. At the time it seemed like sound logic: we get to play on neutral courts against a good team. What I didn't realize (no one did) was that Ca Lu might be the best team in the nation. In fact if the ITA released rankings on Saturday they would probably be #1 Ca Lu and #2 Santa Cruz.

After those matches we headed back to Hotel Solomon to pack up and drive south. However on the drive to Los Gatos the guys were begging for In-and-Out Burger and let me say, it's just pathetic when grown men (or mostly grown men) beg for a burger. So we took a detour and went to the nearest In and Out (which was 30 mins away). I know the guys enjoyed stuffing themselves with burgers from the famous CA chain but it took too long. By the time we made it back to Hotel Solomon, showered, packed-up, and loaded-up it was near 10pm. I should mention that loading luggage for 15 people + stringing machine into the bus is a major undertaking! Takes a fair amount of planning, pushing and shoving to get everything into their correct place. That night we drove to Pismo Beach, CA (got in about 2am) and stayed at the Sadeghi household. Wow what a great home. The house was empty and we had the whole place to ourselves.

Originally I planned to get up early on Monday and drive to Redlands (about 3 hours). However we were enjoying the house and location so much we stayed most of the day. The guys watched movies, went swimming, some hit tennis balls and all enjoyed the sunshine. Personally I enjoyed a break from the van.

By the time we hit the road Monday it was around 4pm. We drove to Glendale and had a wonderful dinner with the Sadeghi's in Glendale. What a spread of food! I think it was the the only time the entire trip that the guys actually left food on the table! After the amazing dinner (and view) we made our way to Redlands and spend the night in a hotel near the Redlands campus.

Tuesday the trip really gets interesting -- at least for me. After the Redlands match I realize my wallet is missing. I used it before the match get Gatorade at a nearby store and then lost track of it. Not sure when it fell out of my pocket (or was taken from me). After the match we unloaded the front of the van and double-checked the courts but no wallet. First time I've ever lost a wallet on a tennis trip. Only saving grace is it is at the end of the trip. Not sure how the trip would have progressed if my wallet went missing early in the trip (no money).

Tuesday afternoon was a bit of a mad scramble. Matt leaves with his family to stay in Southern CA and watch little sister play matches for Pomona. Sam takes Quin with him to stay the night in Glendale. I drive to the Ontario airport and check 8 guys into a nearby Holiday Inn (thanks Hotwire). Those 8 guys were scheduled to fly home Wednesday morning. After making sure those 8 were settling and ready to fly out in the morning, I leave for Vegas with Nadeem, Jake and ET.

Jake, Nadeem and ET knew I would be driving through Vegas on the way back to Walla Walla (it is the shortest route) and planned to spend the remainder of their break there. Since I don't have any money, credit card, or ID I have Nadeem check me into a room to spend the night. I also had to convince one of them to fill up the van so I had fuel to drive the next day. My Vegas experience was heading up to my room and collapsing on the bed.

From Vegas I mad a bit of a southern detour. As fate would have it my parents happened to be in Fort Mohave, AZ (about 100 miles south of Vegas). I had been in contact with my parents about my wallet/money predicament and they were going to help me out. Great day hanging with my parents and seeing the sights around Fort Mohave (and the CO river). The next day with my dad's debit card in hand I finally headed for home.

Nothing too interesting to report besides that it was a pretty long drive. On Thursday I drove from Fort Mohave to Jackpot, NV. I was hoping to make it to Twin Falls, ID, but it was getting dark, was spitting snow and I was tired. My original plan was to sleep in the bus (I had air mattresses and sleeping bags) but it was pretty cold (high 20's) so I went into the casino and asked if I could pay cash (father had also provided me with some emergency cash) and check in without an ID. After calling the manager over the hotel staff agreed to let me check-in and spend the night.

Uneventful drive on Friday and I made it back to Walla Walla and my family about 5pm. Actually it was kind of funny as I was driving through Walla Walla I got a cramp in the arch of my right foot. The bus didn't have a cruise control and I think my foot was finally telling me that it was tired of driving! Quite a sight seeing my kids waiting outside for me to arrive.

If anyone finds a black wallet in the Redlands area, check to see if it is mine! Not much cash in the wallet and the CC's have all been canceled (editor's note: thanks to beautiful and talented wife at home). I would, however, really like to have my 2010 Oregon fishing license back!

Tough double header!

2010-03-23T10:01:00.000-07:00

A bit of a late post but I didn't have internet access yesterday so couldn't provide an update of our matches. Our day on Sunday will go down as one of the toughest days in DIII tennis. Playing one top ranked team in a weekend is tough. Playing two top ranked teams in a weekend is a physical and mental grind. Playing three top teams is akin to playing at the national tournament. At least at the national tournament you only play 1 match per day. Not only did we play 3 top 20 teams in 24 hours we also played the #1 and #2 teams in the nation BACK-TO-BACK!

After our Saturday afternoon upset over Pomona we had to get up early and into the van at 7:30am, head to the Santa Cruz courts and take on Cal Lutheran. Cal Lu has had an unbelievable year ..they are currently undefeated and defeated a number of top ranked teams this season, including just knocking off #1 ranked UCSC on their home courts.

We were hoping the Kingsmen would have a small let down after beating UCSC and we could jump out quick in doubles. This, however, wasn't the case: CLU played very solid doubles and we started off tired and flat. Didn't take long for CLU to go up early in the all doubles and sweep us.

We did have more energy in singles. The match score doesn't show how close or intense the singles were. We ended up losing three of the singles matches in three sets (#3 ET, #4 Chris and #6 Conor). Also Matt played the best player in the nation (CLU #1 player has only dropped 1 set this year) extremely close losing 6-4, 7-6.

Because of the length of the CLU match we ate sandwiches at the courts took a 45 minute break and started up against UC Santa Cruz. Six weeks ago we played the Slugs in Walla Walla and they won 8-1 (our only win at #3 doubles). Plus the Pomona match and CLU matches (7 three setters) were wearing on the team. Against UCSC we didn't have the services of Etienne (the lion of our team) and still missing Christoph in the singles line-up.

Without ET, Matt and Jeffrey paired up at #1 doubles. They ran into a wasp nests at #1 doubles. The UCSC #1 team is one of the top teams in the nation and they were still stinging from their loss against CLU. The UCSC played very good doubles..serving well, nailing returns and closing hard on the net. Was simply too much for Jeffrey and Matt.

I felt that we played well at #2 doubles and had numerous chances to go up breaks. In fact I think we failed to convert on at least 6 break points. The match came down to one break where Quin and Christoph played a sloppy game.

At #3 we tried a new combo of Conor and Nadeem. I was hoping this combo would give us some spark. Nadeem has been injured most of the season and was chomping at the bit to get into the line-up. Plus Conor has been playing some amazing tennis this trip. Not only does he love to play but he is competing incredibly well -- no matter the situation he has been full of positive energy. The energy that Nadeem and Conor brought to the doubles court was great and they ended up winning 8-6.

Match of the trip (so far) was #1 singles. Six weeks ago Matt lost to the Cruz #1 player 6-4, 6-1 on our home courts. On Sunday Matt played his best tennis of the year winning 4-6, 6-1, 7-6 (6). What an incredible effort from Matt over the weekend. On Saturday he nearly knocked off the #5 player in the region before losing 6-3 in the 3rd. Against CLU (#2 in region) he comes close before losing 6-4, 7-6 and that same day defeats the #3 player in the region 7-6 in the third! Talk about an amazing 24-hour effort! Also I should point out that earlier in the trip Matt defeated the #8 (Linfield) and #10 (PLU) players in the region (Matt was #11).

Our other win on the day was our three-set man Conor. I'm beginning to wonder if Conor is just going three sets so he gets to play more tennis. Over the weekend he clinched our win against Pomona 6-3 in the 3rd, lost in three sets to CLU, and then turns around to beat one of the best #5 players in the nation 7-5 in the 3rd! I swear the guy never gets tired on the court. I really feel that Conor has found his game and attitude this trip. He has earned the respect and admiration of his coach, teammates and opponents.

Unbelievable team-effort from the Fighting Squirrels.

We are currently in Redlands getting ready for the last match of our trip -- 2pm against #18 Redlands (we are #26). I'll try to provide Twitter updates during the match.

Big thanks to the Solomon family and Sadeghi families for providing housing and incredibly meals during the trip! It has been great having so much support and love while on the road.

60 years of Whitman tennis

2010-03-21T07:36:00.001-07:00

At our Pomona match yesterday we were treated to a visit from Adrian "Cib" Cibilich. Cib played tennis at Whitman in 1950 and was pleased to report that Whitman went 5-1 that year and won the singles and doubles conference titles.

Cib wasn't the only Whittie in the crowd -- Justin Hayashi '09 and Mark Scoyners '76 also helped cheer the team to victory.

Squirrels knock off #17 Pomona

2010-03-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

Great win today for the Fighting Squirrels! We went into todays match ranked #26 and knocked off #17 ranked Pomona Pitzer Sagehens 6-3. Unfortunately its late and I don't have time for a complete match write-up.

We played PP at the UC Santa Cruz West courts. Doubles started off pretty even. At #2 Quin and Christoph went up two breaks but at #3 Jeffrey and Jake were down two breaks 0-4. About midway through the doubles it appeared that the match would come down to Matt and ET at #1. Quin and Christoph were able to close out their match 8-4. On the heals of that #2 doubles victory, Matt and ET broke (4 great returns in a row) and held to win 8-5. At #3 Jeffrey and Jake dug themselves out of a monster hole and leveled the match at 6-6. At 6-6, with PP serving we had at least two break points to take the lead. Unfortunately we were unable to convert either of the break opportunities. At 6-7 Jeffrey was serving and had a very long game. At one point Jeffrey nailed a half-volley winner to stave off a match point. However in the end PP broke salvaging a point in doubles.

In singles things started off great for Whitman. One the top courts (#1-#4) we won the first set in all the matches. On the lower courts Jasper and Conor both dropped their first sets (#5 and #6). Chris Bailey (#4) got us on the board first with a 7-5, 6-3 victory. ET (#3) played his best tennis of the year winning 6-4, 6-2 giving us a solid 4-1 lead. This put all the pressure on the remaining PP players..they lose one more match and its over. To the Sage Hen's credit they battled hard and forced #1 (Matt Solomon) and #2 (Jeffrey Tolman) into third sets. In those third sets we were up breaks in both matches but couldn't close the deal as PP took both matches.

With the match score now 4-3 everyone rushed to the lower courts to watch the conclusion of #5 and #6. At #5 Jasper played a pretty solid 1st set but lost 2-6 even though he failed to convert game points in four different games. Jasper bounced back in the second to win 6-4. At #6 Conor dropped the 1st set 4-6. At the match change over I was giving Conor words of encouragement when he looked me square in the eyes and said "Coach don't worry, I have this match". Conor stayed true to his word winning the 2nd set 6-0! Conor was locked in a 3-3 battle when the upper courts came down to cheer on their teammates. I think Conor was saving his best tennis for last. At 3-3 Conor has an easy hold. At 3-4 Conor plays a great game -- he changes his tactics a bit and breaks to go up 5-3 (serving). With the team match on the line, Conor bombs a few serves and holds at 40-15. His victory clinched the match for us 5-3. In the last match on, Jasper (of course it would be Jasper -- team joke) goes up 5-2. However the PP player still has a ton of fight and breaks and then holds. I was very proud that Jasper served out his match 6-4.

Whitman 6 Pomona 3

Tomorrow we have the toughest day that any DIII team has ever faced. Today undefeated Cal Lutheran (#10) defeated #1 UC Santa. In the morning we face that red hot Cal Lutheran team. Later in the afternoon we take on #1 UC Santa Cruz. So basically tomorrow we play the #1 and the #2 teams in the nation! As usual I'll try to Twitter match updates.

Matt Solomon NWC Player of the Week!

2010-03-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Matt Solomon being named NWC student-athlete of the week!

http://www.whitman.edu/whitman/index.cfm?objectid=67C7EB61-9133-22A5-E4BAADBBC9AB60B6

Spring Break Spring Break Photos

2010-03-20T09:09:00.001-07:00

Here are some pictures from my camera. I'll try to round up pix from other guy's cameras and load them up soon.

Pictures from spring break.

Getting ready for the weekend

2010-03-19T09:58:00.000-07:00

Great opportunity for the Fighting Squirrels this weekend in Santa Cruz. Tomorrow (Saturday) at 2pm we take on #17 Pomona-Pitzer. On Sunday we have an amazing doubleheader. At 9am we take on red hot #10 Cal Lutheran followed by #1 UC Santa Cruz. Talk about a great weekend of play!

We have been in the Bay area the past few days getting used to the beautiful weather, enjoying the sites and hitting. Thanks to the Stanford coaches for letting us use their varsity courts for an afternoon hit yesterday.

Speaking of thanks. Big HUGE thanks to the Fuchs and Deming family during our Portland trip. Both families opened the homes (and kitchens) to the team and we were treated like royalty! Personally I think both families should open B and B's when they retire from their real jobs:) We are currently staying at the Solomon house in Los Gatos. As a coach I feel very lucky to have some many wonderful families helping us out during our long trip.

Speaking of trip I wonder if we have the longest college tennis trip of the year...11 nights on the road! I have to say that the trip has flown by and we are having a great time. Having such a quality group of guys makes the trip incredibly enjoyable. I think I speak for all when I say we are all having a blast.

For tomorrow matches I'll twitter updates when possible.