This Week In West: Season Recaps and a Tribute to Seniors

West region DIII men’s tennis fans, we’ve had ourselves a week. UT-Tyler went 6-0 in doubles over the weekend, scored the mini-upset over Whitman, and nearly made DIII tennis history by being the lowest ranked team ever to make it to the Elite Eight. CMS proved their mettle. Trinity wasn’t able to take advantage of their opportunities against the #1 ranked team in the nation, but ended their season admirably. P-P and Redlands unfairly spent the weekend playing Super Smash Brothers 64 in their mom’s basement. I’d like to take this week to recap my teams’ seasons and honor the seniors who I’ve had the pleasure of following for the last four years (because after this week, The Blog kinds shuts down for the summer).

CMS

Their season obviously isn’t over, so I won’t be recapping it. They are looking very tough to beat in singles, but they aren’t going to be able to get away with a doubles sweep against the likes of Chicago, Midd, or Wash U, so they’ll have to shape up, especially at the bottom two spots, if they want their season to last much longer.

Skyler Butts – Butts’ list of accomplishments is immense. To name a few: California ITA singles champ x2, Ojai doubles champ x3, Ojai singles champ, NCAA singles runner-up, NCAA team national champion, NCAA team national runner-up x2. I’m guessing he’s been an all-American the last three years, but I’m not going to go check. It doesn’t really matter. I’ve always been a fan of Butts’ because he wasn’t one of the more highly-touted recruits coming in. I saw him in the ITA Summer Circuit before he started his freshman year and thought he was going to be good. Sure enough, he started his freshman year on a team loaded with talent and never looked back. He’s accomplished pretty much everything there is to accomplish individually, but I would like to see him finish his career with a NCAA singles championship. He’ll go down as one of the great Stags in team history.

Lestter Yeh – It took four years for me to notice that this guy has two t’s in his first name, and I’m a little embarrassed about that. As a blogger, I’ve always been pretty tough on Yeh, but he’s really impressed me in his senior season. He never seemed like a guy who really liked tennis all that much, but you can tell how much he cares about the team, and I think that’s what’s driving him to stave off all the young talent fighting for a starting spot this season. Playing mostly 5 and 6 singles in his first stint as a regular starter, he’s lost just two dual matches all season. If the Stags are going to keep moving forward in the tournament, Yeh will have to be a big part of it.

Bryan Mehall – Mehall is another guy that I always root for because he’s a little guy from Colorado who probably wasn’t recruited all that heavily by anyone, let alone Settles. Surrounded by 4-stars, this guy worked his way into the lineup, and has been a semi-regular doubles starter for each of the past two seasons. Though he hasn’t really cracked the singles lineup, you gotta respect a guy that keeps plugging along. Just last weekend, he teamed with Hull to perhaps save the Stags from an ignominious SCIAC fate by beating the Gearou’s in a tiebreaker at #3 doubles. As a doubles specialist, the Stags will need him to up his game this weekend.

Oliver Seifert – I remember seeing Seifert play his freshman year and thinking he would end up a victim of circumstance and never start. Those convictions were furthered when three more 4-stars came in the next year and seemingly supplanted him as a future starter. If you had asked me last fall whether or not he was still on the team, I couldn’t have told you. Lo and behold, here he is! Starting for the 2nd ranked team in the country in doubles. Yet another 2-star carrying the torch for one of the recruiting behemoths of the DIII tennis landscape. He, like Mehall, has to pick it up next weekend or the next match will be the last match of his college career.

Pomona-Pitzer

The good side of having such a brutal schedule is that it’s easy to make up for one or two bad losses. The Hens were able to make the tournament last year despite losses to Bates and Redlands, which is something no other team would be able to do. This year, the Hens saw the bad side of a loaded schedule: if you start racking up losses against key teams, one or two good wins isn’t going to be enough to get you into Pool C. It’s hard to call a top 10 season a disappointment, but I’m sure it didn’t live up to these guys’ expectations. They lost to the two UAA teams they faced and to 3 of the NESCAC’s big four, all by a score of 6-3 or closer. They had several great wins and deserve their top 10 ranking, but they’ll be left very much looking forward to next season when Maassen, Yasgoor, Simonides, Bello, and Josh Kim will all be seniors.

Jon Kim – In a lot of ways, his senior season was a microcosm of his career. He played 11 3-set matches in singles, winning 5 and dropping 6. He won on the doubles court no matter who he was playing with and played in the lineup wherever his team needed him to be. He consistently exceeded expectations, but lost because he was often thrown in a little bit over his head. Nevertheless, he is a coach’s dream to have around, a hard-working guy who can win on both the singles and doubles courts and keeps his head in pressure situations. He’ll be sorely missed when he’s gone next year. I wish him the best in his future endeavors.

Thomas Low – We all know that T Low has a big fan somewhere out there in the blogosphere. Unfortunately, that fan couldn’t prevent him from getting caught on the wrong side of the revolving door. After being a staple in the singles lineup his freshman year, he fell behind some of his peers, as he focused on academic pursuits (can’t really blame him). When he did start, he succeeded, notably notching key victories against Bates, Trinity (CT), and Skidmore last year to contribute to the run of 5-4 magic. Always a gallant fighter and a great teammate, good luck!

Trinity (TX)

If only, if only, Trinity could’ve paired Deuel and Krull together on the same team for a whole season. Alas, it was not meant to be. The Tigers concluded the season by missing the Elite Eight for the first time in a couple years, but their downfall really started in March when they lost to P-P and Wesleyan. Without those two losses, they likely enter the tournament as a #1 seed instead of having to go through the #1 overall seed just to make it to the Elite Eight. Their stretch run was obviously tarnished by the absence of Krull, which basically ruined any credible chance they had of making a charge in the tournament. Without him, however, they fought valliantly. They held off spirited upset bids from both Whitman and Tyler and made it to the Sweet Sixteen with relative ease over Sewanee. They have plenty of guys to fill out their roster, but it’ll be really tough to replace the trio of all-Americans: Deuel, Krull, and Guin.

Adam Krull – I can’t really say what happened, but I’m very sorry that Krull’s career ended the way it did. He was nothing but phenomenal in his 1 1/2 years as a Tiger. With him, Trinity would’ve been really dangerous in the tournament, as he won pretty much every singles and doubles match he played over Spring Break. He was an unselfish guy, willingly taking the #2 spot, even when Deuel was struggling in the spring. An all-American and an ITA doubles national champion: I wish him the best of luck.

Paxton Deuel – After he made the decision to go to Portland as a senior in high school, I was sad to see him opt for the DI life. When he transferred to TU, I was simultaneously happy that he ended up in the right division and sad to see him on the other side of the net. Since transferring, he has been spectacular, winning the Southwest ITA twice and twice qualifying for nationals. He led his team to a history third place finish in 2014. My only regret is that he didn’t play last season, as that team with him on it really could’ve contended for a national championship. Oh well. Parting is such sweet sorrow!

Eliot Guin – I first became familiar with this big-serving senior when he came out of nowhere to win the ITA SW doubles title in 2013 with Thompson. He didn’t see much of the lineup after that until this season when he and Lambeth were one of the best #3 doubles teams in the country. He also cracked the singles lineup for the first time this season, most memorably beating Ryan Elwood 7-6 in the 3rd to clinch the rivalry match over Tyler. Like I’ve stated above, you have to respect a guy that keeps grinding for four years to finally start as a senior, and nobody can take the fact that he’s an all-American away from him.

Redlands

I know I’ve said this multiple times, but I really can’t emphasize enough just how impressed I was with Redlands this season. Cummins and Patty Lipscomb accounted for like 40% of their total match victories against ranked opponents over the last four years, and it was really hard to see them being successful without the dynamic duo. Adding another Lipscomb helped considerably, but the Bulldogs also got bigtime improvements from Joey Dulle and Parker Wilson, with the former jumping from 5 and 6 singles to the #1 spot at the beginning of the year and handling it beautifully. They won a handful of close matches against the likes of Mary Wash, Bates, W&L, UT-Tyler, and Tufts to shake some of the stigma they started to buck last season, and they nearly beat Pomona-Pitzer to cap the year (unfortunately going 0-5 in 3-setters over two matches against the Hens). Looking forward, they have a very young team and a bright future if they can keep up good team chemistry.

Taylor Hunt – As a grad student, Hunt was the only Redlands player in his final year of eligibility to see significant playing time. I wrote a obituary for his tennis career last year, so you can basically just refer to that for what I have to say about him. His career was tragically blighted by injuries, but he had one of the more magical runs I’ve ever seen playing #4 singles as a sophomore winning 12 straight matches, including wins against Williams, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Cal Lu, Depauw, Swarthmore, Whittier, P-P, and CMS. It was a little bit ridiculous. Mad props to him for taking the grey shirt (or whatever color shirt they give for injuries) and helping lead his team one last time. Other than a mid-season lull, he was one of Redlands’ most consistent performers on the singles court, finishing with a nice win over Gearou at #6 in the regular season finale. In doubles, he and Wilson also finished with wins over Whittier and Pomona-Pitzer at #3. Not a bad way to go out.

Nick Pizzuti and Collin Black – I’m not going to lie and say that I’m familiar with these guys. It looks like they played about 10 career matches each. Nevertheless, they played four years for a nationally-ranked team. They didn’t quit. They were part of the team, and they stayed in shape. Congratulations on a strong four years.

Whitman

I find it somewhat ironic that after being in the top 20 for four years relying on 2- and 1-stars like Colton Malesovas, Whitman will now likely find themselves outside the top 20 with a roster filled with 3-stars. Even more ironically, their most successful players (Hewlin, Locklear, Carter) are all 2-stars; whereas, some of the more highly touted recruits have earned themselves some ignominy. For a team that will never out-recruit the likes of CMS, they should remember that their success is predicated on hard work and team chemistry. They put it together for one beautiful day against Redlands. Without that victory, they would finish the season ranked in the high-20’s/low-30’s. If they can capture that day in a bottle and use it next season with a roster loaded with juniors, they’re gonna be alright. Otherwise, they’ll keep slipping. Anyways, the seniors.

Phil Locklear – The Quaker transfer was a savior for Whitman last year when they needed a middle-of-the-lineup player. This season, he was a little bit of a sacrificial lamb at the #2 spot on a team that had about 7 great #4 singles players. The crowning individual moment of his college career came when he and Hewlin came back from way down to win the ITA NW doubles tournament this fall. Though his team season didn’t materialize the way he wanted, he’ll always be an all-American.

Alex Noyes – Noyes has never been a starter for Whitman, but two years ago, he came off the bench to win at #6 singles against Whittier to push his team to a crucial 6-3 victory. Again, any guy who sticks with the team for 4 years is alright with me. Congratulations!

UT-Tyler

If it’s possible to finish a season filled stacked with 5-4 losses with another 5-4 loss and feel good about it, I think the Pats pulled off just that. They will obviously be disappointed about all the chances they missed against Kenyon and GAC and Redlands and GAC (again) and Trinity and Whitman, but they finally got the ranked win they needed to keep a top 30 ranking and bolster their recruiting headed into the off-season. They came within a set of the Elite Eight, which not a lot of teams can say. Their NCAA performance legitimizes their ITA Indoors bid. After several years in the Central, I think it’s about time the tournament heads back home to the West region where it belongs. It would be awesome to see what Fagundes, Gomez, Fischer, McIntyre, and the newbies can do with a shot at a bunch of nationally ranked teams close to home. I’m starting the campaign now #Tyler4Indoors. After a disappointing regular season, their seniors Daniel Budd and Frankie Fischer finished very strong. Frankie will head to nationals next week with Fagundes. Budd will have to walk 8 miles home.

Daniel Budd – By no means did the all-American have a strong senior season, but he finished by nearly taking out two national qualifiers and sending his team to the Elite Eight. He also won his final two doubles matches at nationals. As a singles national qualifier last year, I hope he doesn’t dwell on this season to much. Instead, I hope he reflects on the fact that he turned himself from a lowly 1-star recruit into an all-American. He has a lot to be proud of.

Frankie Fischer – Frankie Fischer is another senior who didn’t have a great season, but the good news is that it isn’t over. After playing a strong #4 last season, he barely touched the singles lineup this season. In doubles, however, he and Fagundes snagged the last qualifying spot then proved that they deserved it by beating Whitman’s and CMS’ #1s back-to-back at nationals. This all-American also teamed with Wootton for a nearly undefeated regular season at #1 doubles last year before they fell in three glorious sets to Wash U at nationals. His doubles game was a marvel, and I wish him good luck next week and in the future.

Jack Puckey – Puckey is another one of those Tyler guys who built his game from the ground up after getting to college. He didn’t start his first two years, but as a junior, he featured heavily at the bottom of the lineup and notched key wins over P-P, Coe, and Whitewater. In doubles, he and Ryan Elwood made a run all the way to the finals of the ITA this past year before falling to Krull and Tyer in the final. That’s a pretty accomplished career for an unknown from Great Britain.

Jacob Van Der Schans – This guy never really played in the starting lineup for Tyler, but he did some pretty good work at the ITA regional. As a sophomore, he inexplicably made it all the way to the quarterfinals before falling to Trinity’s Brown. This past year, he won a couple matches before falling to Krull in the Round of 32. A lot of players have accomplished less.