Wrapping up the ITA's

Sorry for the delay in this post. What a great weekend of play for the Whitties at the Northwest Regional ITA tournament (which we hosted). Not only was the tennis incredible but we able to play under picture perfect blue skies!

On Monday the tournament got underway with the men's semi-finals. As a team we were fortunate to get three of our players into the precious final four. One semi's featured senior Matt Solomon vs Linfield's talented #1 player Mark Magdaong. The other semi was an all-Whitman showdown between junior Chris Bailey and freshman Jeffrey Tolman. I should point out that both Chris and Jeffrey had incredible matches on Sunday. Chris battled past teammate Thomas Roston in a 3-hour 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 match. Not to be outdone Jeffrey pulled off the upset of the tournament when he defeated PLU's #1 player Joel Trudel 4-6, 6-2, 6-2. Great win for Jeffrey, Joel was NWC player of the year last year (going undefeated in singles) and is DI transfer from U of Idaho.

In the semi's Matt was locked in a tight 1st set battle with Magdoang. At 4-4 Matt kicked it up a notch winning 8 of the last 9 games posting a 6-4, 6-1 victory. Good win for Matt..Magdoang is one of the most talented players in our conference and was playing some sweet ball at the end of last year. On any given day he has the ability to knock off any DIII player. In the other semi's Jeffrey and Chris had a slug fest and traded leads several times each set. In the end Jeffrey was able to gut out a 7-6, 7-6 victory over his teammate.

The first set of the finals was incredible. Jeffrey put on a display of shotmaking that has rarely, if ever, been seen on the Whitman courts. He was literally hitting winners from every position on the court (needless to say I was one happy coach)! Jeffrey ended up winning the first set 6-3. However the long weekend of tennis finally took its toll on Jeffrey and he simply ran out of gas. At the end of the match I wondered if he was going to be able to finish. In the end Matt's won his third straight regional title by a score of 3-6, 6-2, 6-0.

Now the real excitement began. With only an hour break we had to get Jeffrey ready to play in the doubles finals with Matt against the #1 team from PLU. We had Jeffrey in the training room for most of the hour getting fluids in him, eating high energy foods (bagels and bananas) and in the cold hydrotherapy pool.

In the doubles final Matt and Jeffrey ran into a red hot PLU team. Gotta hand it to the PLU guys they really played well and served incredibly well. In fact I don't think they ever faced a break point. They ended up winning the match 6-3, 7-5.

Some highlights from the tournament:

• Whitman places 9 players into the round of 16
• Whitman has 3 of the 4 semi-finalist in singles and doubles
• Freshman Matt Tesmond knocks off the #6 seed (#1 from Whitworth)
• Freshman Sam Sadeghi knocks off the #5 seed (#2 from PLU)
• Tesmond/Sadeghi play great doubles reaching the QTRS before losing to teammates Quin Miller/Conor Holton-Burke
• Conor Holton-Burke upsets a seed in the 1st round 7-6 in the 3rd. He continues through the draw losing to Solomon in the QTRS (6-4, 6-2)
• Conor and Quin upset the #3 seeds in doubles and lose in the semi's to Matt/Jeffrey
• Senior Thomas Roston has his best regional showing knocking off the #11 seed and pushes #3 seed and teammate Bailey the distance losing 7-6 in the 3rd
• Jasper Follows and Chris Bailey make it to the semi's of doubles and lose to the eventual champions
• Jasper played true to his seeding (#13) winning two matches before losing to #4 seed Magdoang of Linfield
• Junior Quin Miller (#16 seed) wins two matches before losing to #2 seed Trudel 6-2, 6-3

What makes the above accomplishments even more amazing is we played without four of our key players: Nadeem Kassam and Etienne Moshevich are both studying in London, senior Jake Cappel was out with a wrist injury, and senior Christoph Fuchs is taking the semester off. Man we are on track to have a great year!

Next weekend I'm traveling with a few Whitties to participate in the Boise State Invite. Will be great competition for the Whitman players as the tournament is primarily a DI event. In fact we will be the only non-scholarship school in the tournament.

Immediately following the Boise event, Matt and I will travel to Mobile, AL for the ITA Small College National Championship.