Members of the Colorado College men’s tennis team arrived at the Burghart Tennis Courts at 8 a.m. on Sunday, March 29 to warm up for what they knew would be a challenging match. After running for every ball, striving for every serve, and leaving it all on the court, the team was defeated by Hastings College, 7-2.
Juniors Ross Sherman and Taylor Delehanty pulled out wins in singles. Both Sherman, No. 4 Singles, and Delehanty, No. 5 singles, won in straight sets.
Both first-year Ben Bacher and senior Jack Burger lost in tough third sets.
“A lot of our matches recently have been close,” said Bacher. “Our overall success really comes down to those close matches, so I really think we need to practice a lot more pressurized match play.”
Fifteen of the 56 individual singles matches that members of the team have played have gone into a third set, a relatively high statistic in tennis.
“The greatest strength that the boys have is playing hard and not giving up, playing with their hearts, and giving one hundred and ten percent,” said Ilona Wilson, assistant coach for both the men’s and women’s tennis teams, nicknamed “Lone-dog” by the players.
The men’s team is often looked at as small in stature compared to their opponents, but their scrappy, resilient style of play makes up for this. “Our team is very good at groundstrokes, but we have trouble putting pressure on the point to end it,” said Bacher.
The next battle for the team is against Palm Beach Atlantic. The match will be held at the Colorado College Burghart Tennis Courts at 4 p.m. on Saturday, and spectators are welcome.
“I think we will be the underdogs, but hopefully we will come out with a 5-4 win,” said Coach Wilson about the upcoming match.