Author: Michael Smith
With the 2010 season soon approaching, both the men’s and women’s tennis teams are working hard to ensure that they will improve in both skill and rank. In order to prepare for the strenuous season and competition ahead, Occidental’s tennis teams have already begun practicing for the spring season.
The men’s team has been practicing with the intent to rise up in the Division III league. With new captains at the reigns and head coach Michael Guice leading intense practices, spring will prove to be a blossoming season for the team. “The practices have been going pretty well. We have a new coach this year and really cool senior captains (Victor Sowers, Chris Wan, and Jamal Fahim) who have been leading the team and getting us ready for the season,” Stephen Perkins (first-year) said in an e-mail interview. “We have been putting in some hard work which will hopefully lead to a successful season.”
The women’s team has focused on honing its skills for the season during practices. In addition to general skill-building practices, attention is also being paid to specific kinds of training. “We have been working on both match-play and specific parts of our tennis game,” Maria Stewart (first-year) said in an e-mail interview. Marissa Cassman (senior) added, “In practices, doubles will be a focus.”
Off the courts, the men’s and women’s teams have been building team unity. “We have had some team bonding time at teammate Victor Sowers house,” Spencer Choy (first-year) said. “We’ve had a few BBQs, we had a tennis fundraiser with people who have donated to the program and our team participated in the Up ’til Dawn event.”
The women’s team has similarly bonded off the court. “We had a team dinner at Linda’s (women’s coach) house a while ago, and everyone on the team was there,” Stewart said. “We also have Fiji trash pickup this Sunday, so that should be a really great bonding experience.”
Both the men’s and women’s teams have high ambitions for the season ahead.Choy has expressed that the men’s team hopes to, at the very least, garner a third place victory in the league. Fellow first-year Perkins said, “We hope to finish in the top four in SCIAC and prove that we are a top-tier team in DIII.”
Echoing this goal, Cassman said, “We hope to maintain and/or improve our third place standings in SCIAC.” Clearly, both teams hope to improve their rankings once the spring season begins.
These goals are threatened only by the difficult teams Oxy tennis will face. Cassman thinks that the women’s biggest rivals will be California Lutheran and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. Defeating these adversaries will require hard work for a relatively new women’s team.
The men’s team will have to face off against teams such as Cal Poly Pomona and Caltech. Although both teams have a long road of matches ahead of them, they have set their eyes on victory.
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