The UWW men’s team traveled to St. Peter, MN to play quite a bit of tennis this past weekend. The highlight of the weekend was Saturday night’s match-up of two nationally ranked teams when the Warhawks took on the Gusties of Gustavus Adolphus College. The match took place at their tennis bubble. In the bubble there was an huge loud crowd, and a thrilling atmosphere.
During doubles the intensity (from the crowd and
players) was at the highest levels an apparent in each match. At the
third line, McGlashen/Humphreys returned very well and were the first
match off with an 8-4 win. At #2 Balkin/Bayliss
got down a break, but could not get it back. Tyler Johnson and big
Grant Leisner are a force indoors and were serving very well. The Hawks
could not get the break back, and dropped an 8-5 decision, turning all
eyes to court 1 to see which team would take
the lead into singles. At #1 it was a battle of two of the top teams
in the region. Shklyar/Osborne were taking on Donkena/Smith-Dennis,
last season’s NCAA championship runner-up team. The Hawks started off
on fire taking a 6-2 double break lead and a chance
to serve to go up 7-2. At that time the Golden Gusties dug in and
showed why they are a championship caliber team. They went on a tear
over the next several games breaking twice and holding as needed to
force a tiebreak at 8-8. The Hawks had a handful of
match points, but could not convert, mainly due to some tough returning
when the Gusties needed it most, but both teams should be commended for
their high level play in this match. The duo suffered a 9-8(4) loss
and the team headed into singles trailing 1-2.
I did get the feeling that the team still felt confident that they
could win four of the six singles matchups.
The match was played on three courts, so we put on
the top three lines. At #1 Shklyar took on the #3 player in the region
in Mya Smith-Dennis, At #2 Balkin took on Donkena who he split with last
year in two matches, while McGlashen took
on Juan Luis Chu who has had UWW’s number over the past couple of
years. Shklyar came out of the gates swinging and never looked back
taking it 6-1, 6-3 in impressive fashion. Byron and Donkena battled to a
first set breaker- each holding serve throughout.
It was a back and forth tiebreak, but at 6-6 Donkena got the minibreak
and then the first set. At that time Andy was also in an intense
battle. He started off playing lights out and was up an early break.
Then Chu dug in and did not give an inch. It was
tough to hurt him and he had solid offense when needed. He broke back
to send the first set to overtime, then took it 7-5. Chu then broke to
open the second set, and never let Andy back in to even it up and
eventually won that tight match 7-5, 6-4. At that
time Balkin got broken early in the second set, but at 3-5 he showed
his fight and battled to break back to get it back on serve. It looked
like the Balkin/Donkena rivalry was going to go to the next level, but
Donkena broke to take the match 7-6(6), 6-4.
This put the Hawks down 2-4 with the final three
singles matches hitting the courts. We felt our depth could certainly
be good enough to win at each of these positions, but we’d need them all
to squeak out the win. At #4 Jake got off
to a great start breaking in the first game. This match featured our
smallest player against their 6-5 big man (a little David and Goliath
action). Jake held that early lead until Leisner broke back and then
broke again for the set. Leisner was swinging
big and connecting, hitting lines left and right. He kept it up all
match and finished with a 6-4, 6-0 win and sealed the team victory for
the Gusties. At this time, Bayliss was in control of his match over
Joey MacGibbon at #5, but Osborne simply had an
off night at the wrong time and was defeated by Entwistle at #6.
Bayliss won 6-4, 6-2 playing great fundamental tennis, and Osborne lost
6-0, 6-1 for a final team score of 6-3 in favor of Gustavus.
Earlier in the weekend we had a chance to get all
of our players some great experience. On Friday night we had a varsity
reserve match against Gustavus that we were able to win 6-3. Again it
was an intense atmosphere with many close matches
that could have gone either way. In doubles Bisbee/Worley cruised to
an 8-4 win at #2 while Laktash/Friend and Hawksford/Schnarr were in
tight battles at #1 ad #3 respectively. Friend/Laktash played great
down the stretch and pulled it out 8-6, while #3
ended up on the wrong end of an 8-6 decision, so we were up 2-1 heading
to singles. Laktash played great controlled offense at #1 and Friend
played error free tennis at #6 to get the Hawks out to a 4-1 lead.
Hawksford lost a 6-3, 6-4 decision at #3, while
Bisbee forced a third set match tiebreak at #2. He was down 8-5 but
battle back to win 11-9 and give the hawks a 5-2 lead with the two
remaining courts in close battles. The crowd was still loud as these two
matches wrapped up. Both matches were on similar
courses. Schnarr and Worley had each lost close first sets but battle
back to win second sets in tiebreaks at the same time. So they were
now each in match tiebreaks for the final tally. Worley was down 8-3 in
his breaker, but battled back to win 5-7,
7-6 (3), 11-9, and Schnarr lost his battle 4-6, 7-6 (0), 10-6.
Prior to the Gustavus match on Saturday night, the
Warhawks took on Hamline University. We were able to get a lot of
players in the lineup and swept Hamline 9-0. Highlights of this match
were Friend/Balkin reuniting at #2 doubles for an
8-3 win and Laktash/Bisbee stepping in a #3 for an 8-2 win. In singles
the Hawks did not lose a set and in-fact only lost 13 games in total.
Bisbee won 6-0, 6-0 at #6 and Hawksford won 6-1, 6-0 at #6.
For complete scores from the varsity matches this weekend click here
The intense schedule that we’ve played so far will
hopefully pay off soon. All of the team’s losses have come at the hands
of either D-1 teams or top ranked D-3 teams, so we know we can’t get
too down, but we need to keep pushing hard.
We are certainly getting better from these experiences, and hopefully
will be ready for some big matches down the road.
This next weekend the men host Carthage at 5pm on
Friday night at Four Lakes Athletic Club in Elkhorn, WI. Then on
Saturday both the men and women will host their annual alumni event from
2-7pm at Four Lakes Athletic club. Just around
the corner is our trip to California where both the men and women will
have some incredible matches with teams such as Williams, Amherst,
Middlebury, MIT, Pomona, and DePauw (among others). We’ll keep you
posted!
GO WARHAWKS!!
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