Whitties get washed out, defeat Pacific, fall to DI Gonzaga

Saturday we broke the team into WhittieA and WhittieB for matches against conference opponent Pacific (at home), DI Eastern WA (Cheney), and DI Gonzaga (Spokane).

Before leaving for his medical school interview at Minnesota, Coach Brad was able to get WhittieB past Pacific 9-0. With the victory over Pacific we finished the regular season undefeated in the conference! It also means we go into next weekends conference tournament as the #1 seed.

WhittieA didn't fare as well as our counterparts back at home. We were part way through the first sets of the singles (we started with singles because of the weather) when the rain washed out the match. Unfortunately the rain out canceled one of the the most anticipated singles matches of the year between Phalkun and his younger brother Panharra. Panharra has had a great year for EWU defeating the #1 players from both Portland and Oregan. He is also closing in on EWU all-time single season win record. It is refreshing to see two brothers compete against each other showing both love and grace. Hats off to the Mam family for having such a special family!

The rain pushed our 1:30pm match against DI Gonzaga back to 7:00pm. Although Gonzaga gave us a good 5-1 thumping I felt we played well. Because of lack of court space and the late hour we started with singles. Freshman Jake Cappel played a brilliant match posting a 6-3, 6-1 victory at #6 singles. Even though the team score was 5-1 both Phalkun (#1) and Matt (#3) lost in 3rd set match breakers and Christoph lost a very tight match at #4. We were also playing without Robbie (normally #3) who is at the National Undergraduate Conference presenting the research from his thesis.

Big kudo's Coach Dreves (EWU) and Coach MacDonald (Gonzaga). Both these coaches have done an amazing job with their respective programs -- keep up the good work! Along with Coach Hart at WSU and the amazing Coach Fong at LCSC, the Eastern WA area boasts some very good college tennis teams!

WhittieA travels to Moscow, ID to take on the DI Vandals at 3pm today.

Match Scores
Pacific
Doubles
1) Deming/Wilson def Kai-Corpuz/Ford 8-2
2) Roston/Bennett def Honda/Forgey 8-2
3) Zippel/Strait win by default

Singles
1) David Deming def Josh Kai-Corpuz 6-0, 6-0
2) Dan Wilson def Ryan Ford 6-0, 6-0
3) Thomas Roston def Brett Honda 6-0, 6-0
4) Reid Bennett def Nick Forgey 6-0, 6-0
5) Kenji Strait def Alex Taimano 6-0, 6-0
6) Seth Zippel wins by default

Gonzaga
Singles
1) Phalkun Mam lost Bryce Cooper 6-4, 5-7, 10-8
2) Steven Ly lost Roman Dojcak 6-2, 6-1
3) Matt Solomon lost Brett Womack 6-4, 6-7, 10-6
4) Christoph Fuchs Lost Marco Pineda 7-6, 6-4
5) Nadeem Kassam lost Zack Radetsky 6-1, 6-1
6) Jake Cappel def Charles Adams 6-3, 6-1