As tennis season heats up, California Lutheran University battled Colorado College at the Poulson Tennis Courts on Sunday afternoon. The Kingsmen fell 6-3 to the Tigers.
Cal Lutheran trailed Colorado College 2-1 following the conclusion of the doubles matches. Sophomore Ethan Sherwood and junior Loup Sudre were able to secure the win in the number one spot, winning 8-5. The number two doubles squad of junior Andy Ai and first-year James Truong held the lead for the first part of the match, but were defeated in the tiebreaker, 7-8.
Head Men’s and Women’s Tennis Coach Mike Gennette emphasized the strength of the number one doubles team and the growing strength of the number two squad.
“I love how number one is competing, number two had flashes of brilliance in training and everything, but there is still a lot of experience that needs to be gained,” Gennette said.
Gennette emphasized the Kingsmen’s ability to force mistakes from the Tigers, praising his team’s ability to draw errors from their opponents as well as hitting strongly at the net.
The number three doubles team of first-years Raphael Simon and Jakob Buhler fell 1-8 to the Tigers. Buhler believes his team’s performance was not their best showing on the courts, especially at the beginning of the match.
“If you don’t play your best in the beginning, it’s pretty hard to get back and get control of the match again,” Buhler said.
In the singles matches, the Kingsmen secured two wins, these coming from Simon and Troung. Ai, Sherwood, Sudre and sophomore Jake Anderson all fell to the Tigers in their respective matches.
Gennette praised Simon’s work ethic throughout the afternoon and the season as a whole.
“Rafa always stays in, no matter what,” Gennette said.
Kingsmen tennis does not have any seniors and only has two juniors on the roster. Anderson said that this lack of experience creates difficulties for the team, yet believes that with time the needed experience will come.
“I think it’s more just experience overall, we have a very new team this year so we’re playing other teams who have seniors and juniors who’ve been here for three to four years,” Anderson said.
The Kingsmen begin the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference play on March 30 with a match against the Chapman University Panthers. Assistant Coach Chuck Nester said the team needs to work on starting more aggressive to improve its performance going forward.
“They need to come out more aggressively, more up, more ready, they are too flat-footed when it first started, they had to catch up and I think that’s where some of our losses were at,” Nester said.
Buhler said he agrees with Nester, and believes more intensity is needed in the Kingsmen’s play going into the second half of the season.
“We just need to go for it more, sometimes we play too safe,” Buhler said.
Additionally, Gennette praised the Kingsmen’s work ethic but knows they need to push even further to achieve the results the team is looking for.
“We just have to double up on our work ethic, I think the guys are working harder than they’ve ever worked but it’s not enough yet,” Gennette said.
The Kingsmen will host the Banana Slugs of the University of California Santa Cruz on March 28 at 2 p.m.
