Net News - Feb. 7
2/7/2020 10:05:00 AM | Men's Tennis
Hello from Bama Men's Tennis,
Back at home, sweet, home we are with a multitude of climate change consisting of warm, wet, windy, stormy, snowy and dry weather. As I've heard it said several times before here in Alabama, "if you're unsure what the forecast will be, wait 30 minutes." So we've returned from our northern exposure road trip to Minneapolis and practiced indoors for our final week per the schedule. We host Tulsa on Friday, Feb 7 which is our last indoor match before moving our training and competition outside next week (weather permitting). Friday night will be our first of two Crimson Racket Club sponsored cookouts with hamburgers and hot dogs cooked on the grill and available to eat with chips, cookies and a drink all for the price of $0. We welcome head coach Vince Westbrook and his Golden Hurricane to Tuscaloosa for their inaugural visit and for our Bama Salute match. Alabama Army ROTC will present our nation's colors on court and also one of two honorary first servers in Color Guard Commander, Michael Johnston. The second honorary first server will be Tina Thomas, facilities lead at our facility, softball and soccer. Most of you know Ms. Tina or T as we call her. We are so grateful for Tina's commitment and dedication to our men's and women's tennis programs. She has been an integral part of our Alabama Tennis Family for the last 10 years. Tina has worked diligently to create an incredible culture at our Alabama Tennis Stadium aside from maintaining and treating our facility like it was her own, personal home. She has taken tremendous pride in doing everything the right way the first time and we're so fortunate to work with Tina and her dedicated staff.
Last weekend was a fun one in Minnesota as well as a continued learning experience for our group of competitors. We first faced an intense and loud squad in Drake who came out barking early and often throughout the match. The Bulldogs grabbed the early lead after the doubles and then it was on us to respond to their bite. And respond we did. The guys up and down the lineup all sprinted out to first set leads and never looked back. Plenty of execution and delivery. Patrick Kaukovalta presented his best First Strike Tennis 101 project hitting big serves and returns, taking time away with his court positioning and never allowing his opponent get into a point. PK swiftly evened the match at 1-1. The rest of the guys followed suit with their own display of building, capitalizing, attacking and finishing points and recorded 5 more victories with Edson Ortiz winning a convincing 3rd set super tiebreaker 10-3 (as the match was clinched and a third set was not played). Match Bama.
After a lite hit on Saturday, the team ventured off to the Mall of America, the largest retail shopping mall in the United States with over 2.7 million feet of retail space. Some additional fun facts about the MOA include – 40 million visitors make the pilgrimage annually which is more than the combined populations of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Canada; 7 Yankee Stadiums can fit inside the Mall; there are 11,000 year-round employees (13,000 during peak periods); 258 Statues of Liberty could lie inside the Mall; and, on any given day, the MOA becomes Minnesota's third largest city. Seems overwhelming but it was not overcrowded or tough to get around. Plenty of space and certainly plenty of options to spend money, not to mention something new for all of us to see.
The following day we faced a Gopher team who had just defeated our rivals, Auburn, on Friday night in their home opener. A good crowd was on hand to take in the action before heading out to their Super Bowl watch parties. Doubles was tight and it came down to a pair of tiebreakers at the #2 and #3 positions. We scrambled up a couple of our teams due to sickness – Patrick was unable to play and we later found out he had the flu (along with Jeremy Gschwendtner & Edson). Sam Fischer stepped up in doubles with partner Zhe Zhou pushing their match to a tiebreaker and coming out ahead. Edson and Marcelo Sepulveda Garza were paired together at #2 and almost scored a similar result. Like Sam and Zhe, they broke their opponents' serve to force a tiebreaker and jumped out to a quick lead. The Gophers battled back, however, and edged ahead 8-6 in the breaker to give the home team a 1-0 lead.
After a quick meeting with the team the statement was clear…we had a plan for doubles and got punched in the face. Would we punch back? The guys headed out for singles with freshman Avi Shugar sliding into the #6 singles position. We won four of six first sets in the opening stages of the dual. Zhe staged an impressive comeback and ultimate win after being down two service breaks 1-4 and points to go down 1-5 in the first set. He ended up winning 12 of the next 15 games and recorded an impressive 7-6, 6-1 victory. Jeremy and Riccardo tallied points on their courts with purpose-driven execution defeating their Gophers which pushed us ahead 3-1. Minnesota would not back down capturing narrow victories on courts #1, #6 and ultimately #4 to take the match 4-3. Like the Dartmouth match and 49er-Chiefs game, the opportunities were there and we needed to execute at a higher rate down the stretch. I was proud of the guys that stepped into the match and gave us an opportunity to win as well as how the team responded following the doubles. We scurried off to the airport and jumped on our flight in a nick of time. Back to school, time to recover, respond and prepare for Tulsa.
Part of this week's preparation has involved getting healthy as three of the guys were diagnosed with the flu. Hats off to our athletic trainer Katie Wheeler for getting the boys the necessary medical attention with team doc Craig Buettner at West Alabama Family Practice and Sports Medicine. Tamiflu for all players and coaches as well as deep cleansing of the locker room, training room, team lounge and offices. Thank you Ms. Tina and the girls. After a couple days of recovery, we were all back on court and getting prepared.
So join us Friday at 6pm for our final scheduled indoor match against Tulsa. They are a hard hitting crew that is fearless like their leader, head coach Vince Westbrook who is in his 29th season for the Golden Hurricane. Free hamburgers and hot dogs hot off the grill compliments of the Crimson Racket Club will be served to all fans along with serves, volleys, passing shots, lobs and overheads. Bring the whole family for dinner as Friday nights were not made for cooking at home. If you can't join us, watch the match online via our outstanding live stream. Following Tulsa, our next match on campus will be Friday, March 6 vs. Kentucky (our SEC home opener and also another Moe's burrito night). Happy early Valentine's Day, President's weekend and…
Roll Tide!
George
Players Mentioned
