The UW-Whitewater Men’s and Women’s tennis teams traveled to Sunny Orlando this past week and came away with 9 wins in 10 chances. The women a perfect 5 for 5 and extended their winning streak to 16 as they improved their record to 19-1 (19-0 against D-3 opponents). The men had a nice week as well going 4-1. The men went 15-0 in doubles matches on the week and really had their doubles teams clicking by the end of the week. We used Lowe/Caiati at #1, Glinert/Palecek at #2, and several combinations of Moller/Mory/Scanlan/Miller/Halweg/Krieger at #3, all of which did a terrific job when called upon. Since we can’t go in detail about every match, we’ll just give you the highlights of the week and you can see the box scores for each match at the end of the story.

 

Let’s start with one of the craziest days of tennis I’ve been a part of-the UWW vs Luther matches on Monday. All the teams involved were ranked teams, so we expected a battle.  I’ve actually never been a part of a match when either team has been down 0-3 after doubles and have been able to come back and win 5 of 6 singles matches to win the match. As you will see soon-now I have. The matches were staggered a couple of hours, so the men started first. The Warhawks as they have recently, played very well in doubles taking all three doubles matches. Moller/Scanlan stormed to an 8-2 win, Caiti/Lowe cruised at #1, and Glinert/Palecek pulled out a tough 9-7 win-putting the Warhawk Men up 3-0 after doubles. Mory played a great singles match winning in straight sets to put the Hawks up 4-0, but soon after that Moller lost in straight sets to make it 4-1. At that point things still looked good. Of the 4 remaining matches the Hawks had won the first sets in three of them and only needed one to win. However, all 4 remaining matches ended up going three sets. Still we only needed one! At one point we had three Warhawks serving in their third sets for the match Caiati 5-4, Glinert 5-3, and Harmatys 5-3. They all however were broken when Luther needed to do so, and Luther gained momentum and won them all. Lowe was the remaining Warhawk standing, but ran out of gas against Sundstrom, leaving the men’s team wondering what just happened?? Give Luther credit, the Hawks did not choke, Luther simply stepped it up and took advantage of every break they got and nothing went our way down the stretch. We gathered the team and decided to learn from the experience and not let it affect us the following day as we had another huge match against Calvin right around the corner. We also decided to use it as motivation for our women’s team as they had just completed doubles and found themselves down 0-3 after doubles. They started off flat in doubles losing at all three positions including a hard fought match at #2 that went the other way. Our ladies were still confident however, as we have played solid singles all year. We knew if each player focused on their own match, they could win 5 of 6 matches. That’s exactly what they did. Amundson stepped in and played a terrific match at #6. Daciolas, Stensvaag, and Schaefer each had straight set wins, so we just needed Smith or Siemon to pull out a win. Smith lost hers in a tough three setter, while Siemon pulled out a tiebreak after being down 4-2 in the tiebreak, then took the second set 6-4. What a crazy evening of tennis!!

 

We had to wake up the next day and take on another regionally ranked pair of teams in Calvin College of Ohio. The men started again with a 3-0 lead in doubles. This time #3 doubles was Mory/Moller, and they won 8-2 as well. At #1 11^th ranked Lowe/Caiati beat the 9^th ranked Calvin team 8-1. The women took a 2-1 lead into singles as they won at #1 and #2 and lost a close one at #3. The men’s match got tight again as three matches went to three sets and we had two first set tie breaks. This time the Hawks responded winning 4 of the 6 matches giving them a 7-2 victory. Lowe had a very nice straight sets win over 9^th ranked Zeilstra. For the women, the work needed to be done at the bottom half of the lineup as the Warhawks had their hands full at #1 and #2 singles. Schaefer who has been nearly automatic in dual match play this year lost to a very solid player, Oosterhouse, 7-5, 6-3 and Stensvaag lost 7-5 in the third set. This meant we needed the wins from Smith, Siemon, Daciolas, and Woyahn to give them the 6-3 win. None of these matches came easy, as Calvin is a very solid team.

 

The other highlights for the ladies included a convincing win over 8-1 Kalamazoo to open spring break play and Schaefer’s convincing 6-1, 6-1 win over Hunter’s Evgenia Kim. The other big highlight for the men was their win over nationally ranked NAIA team Webber International, a team full of scholarship players from all around the world. The level of doubles from top to bottom that day was probably the best I’ve seen from the Warhawks all year. Everyone had elevated their play and were riding the momentum they each created from coming back after early set deficits. All three teams came away with overtime 9-7 wins and it seemed the doubles upsets took the wind out of Webbers sails for singles. The Warhawks kept their feet on the gas pedals and came away with an 8-1 win against a very good team. Harmatys looked great in his recovery from a couple of tough defeats early in the week to show what kind of competitor he is. Mory continued his undefeated streak on the week, and Moller, Glinert, Caiati all had nice wins!---For scores from all 10 matches, see below.

 

Both the men and women showed how deep they were all week as well as Gering, Kinsman, Amundson, Kappel, Rutkowski, Woyahn, Halweg, Miller, Porter, Krieger, Scanlan, and Mory combined to go 10-0 in women’s exhibition and 14-0 in men’s exhibition-WOW!

 

When the teams weren’t in action on the courts, they were in action off the court. In addition to the matches we had a couple of practices to get us ready for play. On Sunday the players had a choice of going to Disney or Universal and this was an entire day of excitement! Tuesday night we had out annual mixed doubles tournament which was won by Kelvin and Danielle-Congrats! Wednesday we went to CoCo Beach and then had our traditional seafood dinner with the team and families that were down with us. We had a terrific crowd of parents and supports (including recent grads Johnny Reed and David Stefanik), and I’d like to thank them for all their support and help.

 

The action does not slow down in the near future as both men and women will be tested again next weekend. The women will head to Madison, WI to play at Nielsen Tennis Stadium on Friday and Saturday in the Midwest Invite. This is a tournament for the top 12 teams in the Midwest, so come and watch us there, it’ll be some great tennis! The draw is not out yet, so I’ll send another email giving match times and opponents as soon as I get them. The men have another regionally ranked rival, Coe coming to town for another showdown at 9am on Saturday. At around 3:30 they will take on Division 2 St Cloud State. Both of the men’s matches should be great battles! Come to Whitewater to see those matches.

 

GO WARHAWKS!!