Welcome back again. I didn't have very much to say about NESCACs other than that the team was extremely disappointed so I refrained from posting last week. If anything positive came out of that weekend it was that it gave us motivation to work harder and raise our focus and intensity. When the brackets came out for NCAAs the team was happy to see we were a #1 seed in our region as well as a regional host. It's hard to downplay how nice it is to be able to sleep on campus, not only for match preparation but also for getting school work done. Our first round match (round of 32) was Saturday against U-Mass Dartmouth. They came out fired up and ready to play but never got any momentum going and we were able to dispatch of them 5-0 in straight forward fashion. Although Bowdoin had yet to play Vassar, we were relatively confident they would be our Sunday opponent and we saw later that evening that they had beaten Vassar 5-1.
In our previous match against Bowdoin they took 2/3 doubles but we followed by taking 5 singles. The match started off with Bowdoin showing a lot of intensity on the court. At #3 Kevin and I traded holds early, while courts 1 and 2 both went down early breaks. Bret and Dicken never found a rhythm on the day and fell quickly. Kev and I were able to break and started rolling after that and won the match 8-3. At court 2, Nick and Will went down 6-3 and then 7-4 and were the last match on. Even with match points against them, Nick and Will fought hard and battled every game and it paid off with an unbelievable comeback to take the match 9-7. The momentum we got from winning that match was huge and carried over to the singles.
The singles started off with a lot of first sets won but then things slowed down a bit which raised the intensity on all courts. I would guess it was about 45 from the time I won my first set to when Kevin got off court for our first singles win. This was followed shortly thereafter by Rick winning a close two set match. At that point, Nick and I were in the middle of our 3rd sets, Will was in a 2 set battle on court 4 and Karol was in a 2 set battle on court 6. I started to pull away in the 3rd getting 2 breaks to go up 5-2. At that point, based on the cheering it was clear that Karol was close to clinching the match. Moments later Karol won and the match ended. It was a great day for Williams Tennis (the womens team made the Elite 8 as well) and a nice rebound of intensity from the previous weekend.
We leave Sunday for California for the Elite 8 at Claremont. On Tuesday we play UC Santa Cruz. I've heard stories of epic matches against Cruz and look forward to my first opportunity to play them. After the team tournament, Nick and I will stick around for individuals and then head back to campus to finish off the final exams that we missed. I'll try and post after the team tournament ends, hopefully next Thursday.
Until next week,
Jeremy
In our previous match against Bowdoin they took 2/3 doubles but we followed by taking 5 singles. The match started off with Bowdoin showing a lot of intensity on the court. At #3 Kevin and I traded holds early, while courts 1 and 2 both went down early breaks. Bret and Dicken never found a rhythm on the day and fell quickly. Kev and I were able to break and started rolling after that and won the match 8-3. At court 2, Nick and Will went down 6-3 and then 7-4 and were the last match on. Even with match points against them, Nick and Will fought hard and battled every game and it paid off with an unbelievable comeback to take the match 9-7. The momentum we got from winning that match was huge and carried over to the singles.
The singles started off with a lot of first sets won but then things slowed down a bit which raised the intensity on all courts. I would guess it was about 45 from the time I won my first set to when Kevin got off court for our first singles win. This was followed shortly thereafter by Rick winning a close two set match. At that point, Nick and I were in the middle of our 3rd sets, Will was in a 2 set battle on court 4 and Karol was in a 2 set battle on court 6. I started to pull away in the 3rd getting 2 breaks to go up 5-2. At that point, based on the cheering it was clear that Karol was close to clinching the match. Moments later Karol won and the match ended. It was a great day for Williams Tennis (the womens team made the Elite 8 as well) and a nice rebound of intensity from the previous weekend.
We leave Sunday for California for the Elite 8 at Claremont. On Tuesday we play UC Santa Cruz. I've heard stories of epic matches against Cruz and look forward to my first opportunity to play them. After the team tournament, Nick and I will stick around for individuals and then head back to campus to finish off the final exams that we missed. I'll try and post after the team tournament ends, hopefully next Thursday.
Until next week,
Jeremy
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