2008 Woodie Awards
Men and women's tennis turn up heat during break
Brandon Henry
Issue date: 3/23/07 Section: Sports
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In their only match last weekend the men traveled to George Fox, winning 6-3. The team won five of their six singles matches, but recorded only one win by doubles. The winning doubles team consisted of Andrew Neal and Kei Sato.
Junior Nick Amland explained why the team was more successful in the singles matches.
"Singles is definitely our strength, that's what will keep us in the running for conference. We had a tough time at L&C because we didn't win as many singles matches as we'd anticipated. We need to spend some time concentrating specifically on our doubles play, which is entirely different from singles," Amland said.
After playing a hectic schedule to open the season, the team now has three weeks before their next match, which should give them time to hammer out some kinks.
"The only thing we lack in our doubles play is experience playing together," Amland said. "It's important to be in sync with your partner, which only comes with time and practice. We have great singles players, it's just hard to make that transition to doubles. We'll spend this time to work on our weaknesses and get better as a team."
The women's tennis squad is sitting pretty at second place in conference with a 9-1 record, their only loss coming at the hands of a now-depleted Linfield team.
The first weekend of break the Loggers stormed through Oregon, winning 7-2 at Lewis & Clark and 5-0 at Willamette. The team was short players because of break, and therefore was forced to forfeit matches. The match began with doubles play, of which the Loggers won three matches.
"We needed two wins from singles," Senior Katie Russell said.
"Courtney Dunham won 6-0, 6-1 before most of us had even started our matches. I went up 6-0, 4-0 when it started to rain. The coaches told the Willamette girl we could suspend the match but she agreed to keep playing and I won the second set 6-0. The rain was coming down by this point, and they had to call the match, but not before we had gotten the scores we needed to win."
The girls were still shorthanded against George Fox and Pacific the second weekend of break, but still managed to win each match by a score of 6-3.
"Our team is almost all about seniors, so we're used to dealing with adversity," Russell said. "We have seven girls graduating this year, so it'll be a whole new team next year. So if you know people who play, tell them to come out with us. Right now we're playing to try and topple Linfield. They've always been the major conference power, but they're missing some girls to injury and I think that we'll take them the next time we meet. The conference tournament is seeded, and finishing first and getting that one seed would be nice. If we win, we can keep Linfield from going to Nationals."
The girls travel to Linfield and PLU next weekend after a short break.
• Brandon Henry spent spring break with Russell Howe. No one really know why.
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