With only one returning top player from last year’s National Championship contending squad, along with a new head coach, the Gustavus Men’s Tennis team faced a tough task last weekend in competing against seven of the best Division III tennis programs in the nation in the ITA National Indoor Tournament at Gustavus.
The Gusties dropped all three matches over the weekend to Kenyon, Carnegie Mellon and DePauw, but the weekend was still considered a success for the developing and inexperienced Gustavus Tennis team. “I think we had a successful ITA in the fact that we competed really well. We competed with good sportsmanship, a full effort and a positive attitude,” Sophomore Pat Clark said. “After losing the whole team last year, it was a little tough this year going up against teams with an experienced lineup, but we were there with all three teams. I saw the whole team improve each match, and that shows how much we can improve this season alone.”
The Gustavus tennis program has built its foundation on three fundamental principles: full effort, positive attitude and good sportsmanship. The new Men’s Head Coach, Tommy Valentini, inherited a relatively new team to compete at a very high level, but he was encouraged by the team’s performance over the weekend. “I feel that things went very well for us. We have an entirely new group of guys playing at the national level. The only returning guy we have from last year’s team is Pat Clark. I thought our effort was fantastic, and we stayed positive no matter what the situation was. We represented our school with good sportsmanship, so it was a real successful weekend for our program.”
In the first round, the Gusties faced the fourth-seeded Kenyon College, and after splitting doubles at the number one and number three spots, with Senior Krishan Jethwa and First-year Rodrigo Otero winning a tight match, the number two doubles team of Sophomore Pat Clark and Senior Kyle Olson lost a tough match in a tiebreaker. Kenyon College went on to sweep the singles matches to defeat Gustavus. Even with the tough first round loss, the Gusties remained positive and had help from some Gustie fans. “In my opinion, it’s the best tournament we have the whole year because a lot of Gusties come to watch. We really enjoy the support, and even alumni come back, so that makes the tournament more fun,” Sophomore Daniel Pomeranc said.
The next opponent for the Gusties, Carnegie Mellon, proved to be equally as tough. After losing all three doubles matches, Sophomore Amrik Donkena won a difficult match at the number one position, while Carnegie Mellon won the remaining five singles matches.
In the Gusties final match against DePauw, they were able to get a couple more wins with Pat Clark winning at the number two singles position, Donkena winning at the number one singles position, and the doubles duo of Jethwa and Otero winning at the number three position.
As doubles matches were played first in the course of the meet, it was difficult for the Gusties to gain some momentum heading into the singles matches. The team knows this is an area that it will need to improve in order to win some of the closer matches later in the season. “We can improve a lot more on doubles. We lost seven out of nine doubles matches, with a couple of them that were pretty close. We can improve our volleys, get a little better at doubles overall and start off with a lead in a match,” Clark said.
Valentini also stressed the need to focus on doubles to get better going forward in the season. “We are going to try and prioritize getting our doubles back. In our scoring system, it is certainly a priority and an area we’ve had success in the past. It’s just a matter of getting new guys and new teams together to get comfortable in our system of doubles,” Valentini said.
Despite losing all three matches, the Gustavus Men’s Tennis team is optimistic and motivated to improve. “I think we have to work on conditioning a lot. We play several matches back to back, and we have to be able to perform at a high level in the later matches. We also have to work on the mental aspect of the game and give our full effort,” Pomeranc said. “We have to work hard because we can’t control the results. But we have realized that we are a really young team and are not that far away from the top teams in the nation, so we just have to work hard to get there.”
With the tradition of the Gustavus Tennis program, specifically in the dominance over the MIAC Conference with 21 consecutive MIAC titles, the Gusties will hopefully continue that streak. “We are looking forward to the MIAC competition and playing Carleton at home this year. We do not want to lose to Carleton, and we want to do the best we can to beat them and maintain the tradition of Gustavus winning the MIAC,” Pomeranc said.
Needless to say, the Gustavus Men’s Tennis team has high goals for the remainder of the season. “The result goals for our team are obviously to win the Conference and win the Conference Playoff and make our way into the NCAA Tournament. Those are result-based goals and largely lie outside of our control. The primary goals for us are that each time we step on the court we are 100% successful with making the choice to give our full effort, maintain a positive attitude and compete with the highest level of sportsmanship. If we take care of those things, the result goals will take care of themselves,” Valentini said.