The Gustie men clinch the regular season title, look forward to post-season
After a tough stretch of games on the road, the Gustavus men’s tennis team now know there’s no place like home, as they handily won five straight duals, three of which were MIAC conference rivals.
In the MIAC, the Gustavus men defeated Carlton on Sat. April 21, 2012, and then dropped St. Thomas the following Sunday. Just last weekend, the Gusties clinched the MIAC regular season championship in their victory over St. Olaf.
“We’re not thinking about championships or anything in those terms, we’re just thinking about our opponents,” Head Coach Tommy Valentini said before securing the regular season title last Saturday.
“St. Olaf has been fantastic this year and their 6-1 conference record shows that they are one of the top teams in our league,” Valentini said.
All duals against conference opponents were 9-0 victories.
“Carlton is our number one rival in the conference. We really took it to them with the 9-0 win,” Senior Pat Clark said.
The Gusties’ current five-match winning streak comes after a rough three-game losing streak, in which the Gustie Men lost duals against UW-Whitewater, 12th ranked Pomona-Pitzer Colleges and no. 8, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.
The latter two duals were part of a training trip in California, a trip that also featured a victory against no. 20, Whittier College.
“The Match against Whittier really came down to the wire,” Valentini said. “Tyler Johnson stepped up and came back from behind to win the decisive match for us.”
“As Tyler was starting his third set, all other matches were finished and we were knotted up 4-4 with Whittier,” Clark said. “He was down 3-5, but dug deep and won his next 4 games to take the set 7-5 and win the match for us.”
“He kept battling back again and again after getting down. We rushed the court after he won and celebrated with him. It was our first win against a Top 25 team in a while, and he got us a win when he was down, when it looked like he was going to lose,” Valentini said.
The Gusties lost their last two matches in California and lost a close match to UW-Whitewater, a dual in which they expected to perform well.
“Whitewater played great, we’ll give credit to them, but we definitely found a few areas where we could improve,” Valentini said.
“It was tough losing against Whitewater,” Clark said. “As a team, we learned that we need to come out with more energy. We responded really well and the next day when we went out and beat Kalamazoo 8-1.”
The victory against Kalamazoo sparked their current five-match tear.
After being crowned the regular season champs for the 24th straight year, the Gusties are looking to finish strong in the MIAC playoffs, which will be held this Friday and Saturday, May 4-5, at the Swanson Tennis Center.
“Coming down the stretch here; one thing we have going for us is a fantastic group of seniors,” Valentini said. “We really want to make it special for them, because they’ve given so much to this team and this program.”
The Gusties go into this weekend’s matches with an overall record of 19-7 on the season, and are undefeated in the MIAC at 9-0.