Author: Riley Kimball
When the season begins in January, the Men’s Tennis team will be prepared. The first match of the season takes place less than a week into the spring semester, so the team is practicing hard this fall, conditioning and preparing for a challenging season.
The Men’s team (as well as the Women’s team) took fifth in SCIAC last year, and is looking to build upon this achievement. One difficulty in doing so, said Men’s Coach Alberto Martin, is that, at an academically intense school like Oxy, studies come first. This means that in the event of a clash between classes and sports, players will be absent from matches, including SCIACs.
Entering his second year of coaching at Oxy, Martin believes that this priority for education is the team’s greatest weakness, but is one that will not change. To overcome it, Martin is working toward fostering a fuller roster. “We’re going to be really solid through the middle of the lineup,” Martin said, so that players are ready to participate in even the most difficult matches, no matter the lineup.
Martin identified such returners as Reid Fenning (junior), Victor Sowers (junior), Mike Kuhn (junior) and Jamal Fahim (junior) as having improved greatly during the off-season. Also of note are new men’s players Tyler Morgan (first-year) and Ben Gilmore (first-year), who will help round out a strong roster after the loss of three seniors.
The challenge for Men’s Tennis will come in toppling the giants that currently reign in SCIAC. Martin is targeting victory at the conference tournament as the ultimate goal, challenging rivals Pomona, Cal Lutheran, Redlands and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.
During the season, the team will play several teams ranked in the top 30 in the nation, as well as UC Santa Cruz, ranked first in the nation, which will certainly prove to be the most daunting match of the year. These matches will be “good to give the team a lot of experience,” Martin said, allowing the teams to hold their own in the conference this year and in the future.
With strong leadership and few losses, the Men’s Tennis team is squaring up against the competition, and looking to improve on its previous performance. After several months of hard training, Men’s Tennis will prove this January that the Tigers mean business.
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