Both men and women’s fall tennis season ended with a match lost against Drew University on Oct. 18. The men’s team had a hard fought match ending a bit short with four wins and five losses. The women’s team fought hard as well, but got swept by Rangers 0-9.
Overall, the Cavaliers started the 2019-2020 season off with a good note. Last year, the women’s tennis team went zero wins and 15 losses. With just the fall season this year, the women’s tennis team lost seven but got their first win against Penn State Berks on Sept. 23 winning five matches to only three of the Berks matches. Last year, the men’s tennis team went 4-0 in conference play and overall, was 11-4 gaining a .733 percentage rate. This year, the men’s team has a .500 percentage rate with two victories against Penn State Berks and King’s College, but falling short with two losses against Jefferson and Drew University.
“To get a win this year was a big confidence booster,” junior Miranda Smith said. “A combination of our teammates supporting each other and our new coach pushing us to succeed gave us an edge to win [the match against Penn State Berks].”
“From the fall matches that we won we played smart tennis and executed well,” senior Matthew DeMaria said. “We were also mentally strong and didn’t let any negativity affect our match play.”
The women and men’s tennis teams are excited about the future matches and the possibility of going into postseason play. They also have a tough mentality going into the spring season knowing that there are matches they want a redo on from the fall season.
“For next season we are very excited,” Smith said, “because we have some matches we want a do-over on. Like Neumann, we lost 4-5 so we definitely want to get that win back. We also want to get to the AEC tournament this year and put a couple of numbers on the board.”
“I am most excited about conference play and going for our 4th straight conference title,” DeMaria said. “We feel very strong about our chances to win and hopefully we live up to the expectation.”
“If we could rematch any team it would be Drew,” DeMaria said, “because we lost a close match and it hurt because we felt so strong about our chances and we were in it till the end. I definitely wish we had that one back.”
