Over the weekend, the Redhawks Men’s Tennis team competed in their opening tournament of the season, the Dar Walters Fall Classic at Boise State University. The tournament lasted from Friday, Oct. 6 through Sunday Oct. 8 and there were plenty of positives to be found.
Head coach Adam Reeb is entering his third year of coaching tennis at Seattle University and was pleased with what he saw over the weekend. “The energy and hunger of this squad is very cool to see,” Reeb said, who was glad to see his athletes compete after almost a month of practice.
The team is becoming more his own as his own recruits have begun to fill the team. Seven of the 10 athletes on this year’s team are either Freshmen or Sophomores. It is a young group which excites Reeb and is important to consider all year long.
“It’s an adjustment from juniors to college tennis. We’re having to rely on solid leadership from our upperclassmen Matt Alderson, Jeremiah Kalmus, and Michael Schoettler as this unit gels and becomes even more tight knit over the year,“ Reeb said.
The underclassmen left their mark in this opening tournament, most notably the doubles team of Sophomore Trenton Nield and Freshman Colton Weeldreyer. They advanced all the way to the quarterfinals before narrowly losing to Abilene Christian University 9-7. On their way to the quarterfinals, they defeated doubles teams from Gonzaga and the University of Idaho.
The second pairing of underclassmen to compete in the doubles featured sophomore Arshak Ghazaryan and freshman Emilio Monroy. Ghazaryan and Monroy made it to the round of 16 before falling to the University of Oregon, top seeded at this tournament who went on to lose in the tournament’s finals.
The third doubles team consisted of senior Matt Alderson and sophomore Adrian Sanabria, who advanced through the tournament’s first two rounds with their tournament ending in the round of 16 at the hands of Portland State.
Overall, the doubles teams were the highlight of the first weekend of competition and Reeb was excited to see this as it has been a focus of their practices leading up to the tournament.
On the singles side of things, the Redhawks saw less success but had Ghazaryan make the round of 32, the furthest of any Seattle U athlete this tournament for singles.
Ghazaryan’s doubles partner, Monroy, made his own. He made it deep into the consolation bracket, advancing into the semifinals before being eliminated.
Reeb sees the team’s overall performance as a positive one and definitely something they can build on.
“We’ll take what we learned this weekend in Boise and look to build upon the things we did well and shore up the things we didn’t. Just keep putting maximum effort in every day and we’ll see our progress,” Reeb said.
The Redhawks will look to improve upon this already stellar performance when they next compete at the ITA Regionals in Stockton Calif., Oct. 19 through 23.
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