Day 2 of the ITA Small College Championships

It was a tough day for Matt and Etienne losing 6-2, 6-2 to the top team from Middlebury. The Middlebury duo came out strong and played very solid doubles the entire match. It is easy to see why Middlebury is consistently one of the top NCAA III programs in the nation. Next up for Matt and ET is the #1 team from Claremont who lost in a tight match-breaker to the tournaments #1 seeds.

ITA Update

Hello from the deep South. Yesterday was the opening day of the ITA Small College Championships sponsored by USTA and Outback steak house in Mobile, AL. Yesterday was the play-in match between PNW and TX. The winner of these play-in matches advance to the final eight and are guaranteed 3 more matches.

Sophomore Matt Solomon opened the day with a tough 6-4, 6-4 loss to Trinity #1 Oliver Gaines. Hats off to the Gaines -- he played well and served incredibly well the entire match. In fact at one point he bombed in 14 straight serves (yes I was counting) never giving Matt a whiff to break serve. End the end Gaines had a bit too much experience and was able to close out the match. For reference last year Gaines played #1 for the 6th ranked Trinity team.

In doubles Matt and Etienne showed a lot of poise coming back from an early break in the first set. It is strange how momentum works in sports and I sometimes this is no more evident than in college doubles. After being down a break 3-2 in the first Matt and ET fought back and leveled the match at 4-4. At 4-4 ET served a great game overcoming 3 huge winners (two off of returns) by the Trinity team to hold for a 5-4 lead. At 5-4 ET and Matt played a solid return game and finally won the set on their 3rd set point. At this point the Trinity team got down on themselves and the Whitties races out to a 4-0 lead (winning 6 straight games). In that set Matt and ET were broke once but were able to take the second set 6-3.

This afternoon Matt and ET faces the #1 team from highly ranked Middlebury. Those that want to keep abreast of all the draws can do so at the official tournament webpage

ITA Wrap Up

Things are certainly looking up for the Whitman netters. The ITA Regional tournament wrapped up with 4 Whitman singles players in the semi's and 2 Whitman doubles teams in the finals.

Both the singles semi-finals were amazing battles that lasted well over three hours. In semi #1 Freshman Chris Bailey defeated Sophomore Jake Cappel 6-4 in the 3rd set. And in semi #2 Sophomore Matt Solomon defeated Freshman Etienne Moshevich 7-5 in the 3rd. In the singles finals Matt defeated Chris 7-5, 6-2. The doubles final was another incredibly close match with Matt/Etienne narrowly defeating Jake/Nadeem 9-8.

Obviously this was a special weekend for Whitman tennis as we placed 12 players into the final 16, 7 players into the final 8 and 4 players into the semi's. In fact, in the singles draw only one person lost to a non Whitman player! This is an amazing accomplishment since the NWC conference is much stronger than in previous years.

Matt (singles) and Matt/Etienne (doubles) will now represent the PNW region at the ITA Small College championship Oct 10-14 in Mobile, AL.

Here is a link to some pictures from the weekend.

WOW!

The good (great) fortunate of the Missionary Netters continued through the second day of the PNW/ITA Regional Tournament. Going into the 2nd day of the tournament we had placed 12 guys into the final 16. On Saturday we placed 7 into the final 8 and 4 into the final 4! Our good fortunate doesn't stop there as we also have 2 doubles teams in the final!

Here are the results from Saturday
Round of 16
Chris Bailey (FR) defeated #1 seed Kevin Floyd (#1 PLU) 6-3, 6-2
Jake Cappel (SO) defeated #9 seed Mike Manser (#3 PLU) 7-5, 6-1
ET Moshevic (FR) defeated #14 seed Nick Ruess (Linfield) 6-3, 6-3
Christoph Fuchs (JR) lost to #3 seed Justin Larimore (#2 PLU) 6-3, 3-6, 6-3
Matt Solomon (SO) defeated teammate Robert Rye (SR)
Jasper Follows (SO) defeated teammate David Deming (SO)
Quin Miller (FR) defeated teammate Dan Wilson (SO)
Nadeem Kassam (SO) defeated teammate Justin Hayashi (JR)
Round of 8
Bailey defeated Follows
Cappel defeated Miller
Moshevic defeated Larimore 6-2, 7-6
Solomon defeated Kassam

In doubles Matt/ET defeated the #1 team from Willamette 8-5 and the #1 team from Linfield 8-5 to make the finals. Meanwhile Jake/Nadeem defeated a Linfield team 8-2 and the #2 seeds Larimore/Peterson (#1 PLU) 8-3.

Singles starts at 9am today with:
Jake vs Chris
Matt vs ET

The doubles finals will follow the singles final with Matt/ET vs Jake/Nadeem

ITA Regionals

What a great day to be a Missionary! Yesterday was the first day of the PNW/ITA Regional Tournament at Linfield College. This event is somewhat unique in college tennis in that all the players are thrown into one large draw and they duke it out regardless of position on a team. This isa great opportunity for guys lower on a team's ladder to showcase their skills. Just let me say that ALL the Whitman guys made the most of this opportunity. We were fortunate enough to get 12 players into the 64 draw and going into the round of 16 all 12 Whitties are still playing! That is right, 12 of the last 16 players in the draw are from Whitman!

Highlights from day one include:
Jasper Follows defeating the #5 seed (#1 from Linfield) 10-5 in a third set breaker
Nadeem Kassam defeating a very good #6 seed (#1 from Willamette) 10-4 in a third set breaker
Christoph Fuchs defeated the #9 seed (#1 from Whitworth) and has won both his matches in straight sets
Robert Rye hasn't dropped a set including defeating the #13 seed (#4 from PLU) 6-4, 7-6
Quin Miller rolled through both his matches defeating the #12 seed (#2 from Willamette) 6-3, 6-3
ET Moshevich has only dropped 4 games in 2 matches
David Deming won both his matches including defeating the #16 seed (#2 from Whitworth) 6-3, 6-3
Justin Hayashi gutting his way through 2 tough matches winning 1-6, 7-6 (6), 10-8 and then 6-4, 7-6
Chris Bailey rolled through his first matches and now plays the #1 seed
Matt Solomon played well winning his first two matches 6-0, 6-0 and then 6-0, 6-3
Jake Cappel won his first two matches 6-3, 6-0 and 6-0, 6-2
Dan Wilson motored through his first matches without dropping a set

In doubles we placed three teams into the final eight: Matt/ET, Jake/Nadeem and David/Dan

Todays match-ups are
Chris vs #1 seed Kevin Floyd (PLU)
Jake vs #9 seed Michael Manser (PLU)
Christoph vs #3 seed Matt Larimore (PLU)
ET vs #15 seed Nick Ruess (Linfield)

The rest of the matches are Whitman vs Whitman matches
Jasper vs David
Dan vs Quin
Justin vs Nadeem
Matt vs Robert

Match Stats

On the main blog page I added links (they are on the right side) for match stats for the 2006-2007 year and updated career match stats (since 1995). Both of these lists are sortable in a number of different ways including wins, losses, tiebreaks, and third sets.

If you receive this update via email you can find the Whitman Tennis Blog at http://whitmantennis.blogspot.com

Team Grades

Just wanted to a brag a bit and let everyone know the Whitman Men's Tennis GPA was over a 3.4 last semester! Quite an accomplishment when you consider the overall caliber of Whitman student body. Also 6 players achieve above a 3.7 GPA while only 2 players were below a 3.0.

Great job to everyone on the team!

Looks like I will be stringing more rackets next semester. I have a standing bet with the team that if they (as a team) achieve over a 3.2 GPA I will string their rackets the following semester.

Happy 4th of July to everyone!