Finally! It’s becoming one of my most eagerly anticipated articles of the winter, thanks to some rabid Blog fans, and I’m happy to finally get the people what they want. With nine teams, I tried to give everyone at least a little attention, but as I said at the beginning of this season—if you want me to write about you, do interesting stuff. It’s as simple as that. Previews are a massive grind for us to write, as we are essentially writing about nothing concrete and just have to make these articles appear out of thin air (ASouth only writes articles like this), so feel free to call me out on anything, or better yet, prove me wrong this spring. And if you really want to go above and beyond, do what some dude on Colby did a few years ago and a make a giant poster of one of my tweets doubting them and hang it up in your dorm room. Okay, I’m starting to ramble. Enjoy the preview, comment/tweet/DM/email with your comments, concerns, insider info, etc, and rejoice in the fact that tennis season is basically here!
2018 Order of Finish
- RPI
- Skidmore
- Hobart
- Vassar
- Ithaca
- St. Lawrence
- Union
- RIT
- Bard
RPI
Team overview: RPI is coming off their first Liberty League title last season–but you knew that already. The biggest storyline for RPI this year is how they will handle being the definitive favorite for the first time ever. Anything less than another title would be a disappointment, so while it’s great that they’ve risen so far, the downside is that maintaining their place and continuing to rise will become exponentially harder. Coach Satkowski has now brought in three straight very impressive recruiting classes, and though they are still a pretty young team, they now have enough experience to turn some close losses into big wins.
Players to watch: With a pretty young team it’s hard to say what this team’s lineup is going to look like, especially in the bottom half. Blog favorite Andrew Imrie had a solid freshman campaign and is likely to see a lot of action in the top half of the singles lineup and at #1 doubles with Sebastian Castillo-Sanchez, and his fellow sophomore Brian Niguidula could also really emerge as a tough mid-lineup out after an impressive freshman year. As far as the freshmen go, Dylan Payne (4-star from Texas) is the most likely to have a major impact, making the R16 at ITAs (lost to Wynne) and QF in doubles alongside Zack Ebenfeld (lost to champs Anderson/Dubrovsky).
Schedule Analysis: Their spring break schedule isn’t up on the website yet, but I took a gander over at Pomona-Pitzer’s schedule and it appears that the Hens are hosting RPI for an afternoon match after PP plays Mary Washington in the morning. Hmmmmm. File that one away! Before California, RPI starts off with a nice “ease into the season” match against Rochester, and after spring break they host Brandeis in what will be a great chance to keep rising up the rankings. Deis narrowly edged them in a barn burner last year in Waltham, so RPI definitely has a shot for revenge—though Brandeis is looking REAL good this year. Middlebury that same weekend will be a good “experience match,” but the defending national champs are on another level. After that, it’s mainly just conference action the rest of the way, where the biggest thing at stake is really just seeding and a mental edge going into Liberty Leagues.
Expectations: I’m expecting RPI to build on last year. They’re not going to be able to keep improving at the same rate, but with the same core they are absolutely still my favorite to win the conference again and head into NCAAs as a low two-seed.
Skidmore
Team overview: For a very long time (probably five-ish years) I’ve been anticipating the demise of Skidmore as their top players kept graduating, so it’s kind of impressive how long they held on the top spot in the league. To be honest I just wrote this entire section only talking about players from the past (which I then deleted) which says two things: 1. The current squad hasn’t distinguished themselves yet, with JT Wynne the notable exception 2. I’m living in the past. Anyway, Skid is a bit more of a mystery in my eyes this year than in the past. Expect to see plenty of freshmen and sophomores in action, so we should hopefully get a better idea of this team as the season wares on.
Players to watch: JT Wynne is the obvious answer. The fiery junior is a love-him or hate-him kind of guy on court, and while nothing about his game stands out, he’s a winner. In my head I don’t see how he goes better than like .500 playing at #1, but I also never would’ve predicted that he’d win the ITA as a sophomore in singles and doubles and qualify for NCAAs in dubs (as an alternate, but if you make NCAAs, you made NCAAs.) Beyond Wynne, I will highlight Noah Williamson as someone I’ve heard is quite talented as could be one of the top freshmen in the conference. He beat Quijano (Bates #1-2) this fall at Midd and Niguidula (RPI #3-6ish) at ITAs, and if he follows the Kai-Yuen Leung and JT Wynne training plan for rapid improvement, he could end up being extremely legit.
Schedule Analysis: Coach Simms always manages to put together a very good schedule for the Thoroughbreds. There are plenty of good matches on there, but a couple I’ll point out are 1. @Caltech 2. Home vs MIT. Caltech is dangerous and will be licking their chops for a shot against Skidmore, and with it being Skid’s first outdoor match, the Thoroughbreds are going to have a very tough time fending off the Beavers. Skid finishes the regular season with MIT before Liberty Leagues, and this should be a great tune up against a team that is so much more talented than their results indicate. By late April I’ve got to think MIT is going to be crushed with academic stress as usual, giving Skidmore an obvious edge.
Expectations: Very very hard to say, but I think Skidmore is going to scrap together the wins to keep themselves in the mid 20s, and while they could beat RPI and retake the conference title, I think it’s going to take a couple years of gaining experience and rebuilding before they really set the stage to get back on top. As far as fending off Hobart goes, the Statesmen have never come particularly close to beating Skidmore (at least in the past many years), and until proven otherwise, I’m confident in saying that Skidmore will be playing in the Liberty League finals and finish with #1 or #2.
Hobart
Team overview: If you’ve read The Blog for very long, you’d know that HOBART is one of the teams that I’ve enjoyed following the most, especially as they’ve risen into the national rankings. As I was looking through TRN, I found it interesting that Hobart hasn’t really started to bring in significantly better recruits than in the past. There’s not a single three-star on the roster, so credit to the Statesmen for developing well, and credit to Coach Riskie for spotting some two-stars with a lot of room to grow. In 2017 Hobart made a surprise run to the Liberty League final, but last spring they fell in the semis, with both RPI and Skidmore clearly better. As is true across the board, it’s one thing to have a team improve, but it’s another (much harder) thing to keep that improvement going year after year.
Players to watch: Alan Dubrovsky is no longer a low-key really solid player after winning ITAs this fall and finishing fifth at the ITA Cup, so while he’s obviously one to watch, especially in his conference matches against Wynne and Castillo-Sanchez, let’s also shine a light on a couple other guys that are going to be massive parts of any Hobart success—seniors Jonah Salita and Jonathan Atwater (sorry Reinharz, I know you’re a senior too, but these two dudes have been in Geneva since freshman year.) Salita and Atwater have been top-half of the lineup players all four years and have had success in both singles and doubles. With Dubrovsky at the top, Salita and Atwater should make for a solid #2 and #3 singles (probably), and whether they play doubles together or split up at 2 and 3 (assuming Dubrovsky/Anderson play #1), they should be anchors of tough teams. And obviously the extra layer to all of this is what Salita and Atwater can bring to the table from a leadership perspective. D3Northeast doesn’t tweet “*name*, SENIOR” just for fun. (UPDATE 1/14: I’ve been called out by ASouth, who claims he coined the whole *name*, SENIOR bit, who was in turn called out by NE who points out it was THE GURU (who is?) that started the tradition.) We don’t write odes to seniors for S’s and G’s. The seniors can make (see Bowdoin, 2016) or break (see Tufts, 2018) a team.
Schedule Analysis: Now that they’re more of an established team, Hobart’s schedule has really beefed up, and in 2019 they play a nice variety of matches. There are many intriguing ones, including a bunch of reciprocals from last year. New on the docket in 2019 is a spring break trip to California where an exciting match against Caltech awaits as well as matches with Oxy, Whittier, and Chapman. I also love the fact that Case is making a trip to upstate New York—Coach Todd wouldn’t make that trip if it wasn’t worth their while. There are plenty of matches where Hobart can solidify, improve, or hurt their ranking, but all of it is secondary to conference play. It’s a tall task, but I’m sure the Statesmen have their hearts set on shocking us all and topping RPI and Skidmore.
Expectations: There’s a pretty wide range of reasonable possibilities for Hobart this year. Realistic best case scenario? Dubrovsky is a stud at #1, Salita and Atwater are tough outs at 2 and 3, Hobart finds some depth (literally every other player on the team could play) and puts together three strong doubles teams, combining it all to catch fire and beat RPI and Skidmore. I’m not saying that’s going to happen—but it’s also not totally out of the question. On the other hand, it’s also realistic that Dubrovsky is a .500 or worse #1, the seniors have a foot out the door, and the gap between RPI/Skid and Hobart widens, with the Statesmen having to grind just to fend off Vassar and maybe even Ithaca. Most likely scenario is somewhere in the middle, wherever that means. I certainly don’t expect Hobart to win the Liberty League, but I do hope they at least have some tight matches with RPI and Skidmore in the regular season to set up an intriguing postseason tournament.
Vassar
I’m only giving the top three teams a detailed breakdown, but I’ll give the rest of these teams a little blurb. It won’t come close to ASouth’s Power Ranking blurbs, but then again I ain’t the HEADMASTER for a reason. As I tweeted this week, Vassar hired a new head coach this winter, bringing on Tina McDermott from Hawaii-Hilo. It’s her first D3 job, and joining mid year only adds to the challenge. There’s likely an upper limit to how quickly everyone will get on the same page, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will negatively impact on court results. With two stars throughout the lineup, I don’t think Vassar can really compete for a conference title, and while it’s not completely out of the question, I don’t think they’re going to really challenge Hobart and move up from fourth. Last year they missed one of their top guys, Allen Sokolov, for most of the spring, so him staying healthy will be key for the Brewers, especially in big matches against Rochester, Stevens, NYU, Wooster, Chapman, and of course the whole LL schedule.
Ithaca
Ithaca is a school with a solid sporting culture and has had some very solid tennis players through the years, but not necessarily the depth to consistently hang with teams ranked ahead of them. They are essentially another team of two-stars, so you don’t really know what you’re going to get. Maybe a couple of them trained super hard and are going to be legit? Maybe a couple of them decided they don’t want to miss out on any Saturday nights and quit the team? Or maybe they’ll just kind of be typical two-star level, which is to say somewhere in between those two opposites? We’ll see, but expect Ithaca to once again be a step below the top 3 teams and be fairly close with Vassar.
St. Lawrence
St. Lawrence has been in the regional rankings in the past, but I don’t see them getting back there this year. My sense is that they have some similarities to NESCAC schools, but without the same academic prestige. That makes recruiting very tough, though not impossible. Of note is that head coach Neil Caniga took over as interim head coach for the women’s team last year, and he seems to now be the head coach of both programs now. You see teams split the head coaches fairly often, but it’s much rarer for the opposite to happen.
Union
I don’t know a ton about the Dutchmen, but in their Twitter banner photo their assistant coach Don Dudley is wearing a sleeveless Union shirt with “Coach Dudley” embroidered on it. That’s a power move and I respect it. But more importantly, does his team? (UPDATE 1/14: I’ve been rightly called out for not mentioning that Union actually beat RIT last year to finish seventh. It would be an even bigger step up (obviously) if they can beat St. Lawrence to make the Liberty League tournament. I don’t think Union is quite there yet, but they’re headed in the right direction.)
RIT
It’s kind of surprising that the gap in tennis level is much wider than the difference in initials between RPI and RIT. Both are engineering schools of roughly similar academic levels in upstate New York, and both have respectable athletic resources (both have D1 hockey and other strong D3 sports). To answer my own question, I think one of the things that sets RPI apart (and holds RIT back) is coaching. RIT has had a lot of turnover through the years, but I’m convinced that with the right person this team could get enough to at least be in the top four down the road. RIT lost 6-3 to Union last year, and while I think the margin between both teams is still slim enough that RIT could win, Union seems to be on a steady upward trajectory, whereas RIT has been much more stagnant.
Bard
The Raptors are led by first year coach Ryan Lee Videgard, who is Hawaiian and also does some tutoring for cello and bass. Sounds like an interesting fellow. Bard could get significantly better (which isn’t saying much) based on the school’s niche appeal, but based on their schedule I don’t know if they play indoors at all, which certainly limits things. They lost 8-1 to Union this fall—the gap between them and everyone else is pretty significant.