Men's Tennis Back at .500 With Win Over Caltech

The Whittier College men's tennis team defeated Caltech 7-2 April 5 in Pasadena, Calif., to level their record at 8-8 on the season.

"We knew going in that this was going to be a dogfight," said Coach Bojalad, "Many, when hearing Caltech, think ‘Easy W.' These are certainly not the thoughts of insiders in the SCIAC tennis community. They beat us last year, and quite frankly we were lucky to have won by this large a margin."  

The team has been playing pretty solid doubles as of late. Despite getting off to shaky starts, the Poets won at number one and two doubles. At #2, Lance Franey ‘09 and Ted Wyatt ‘11 won an impressive 8 of their last 10 matches.

Wyatt continued his strong play in singles as well, winning his second straight at number one.

Sean Robertson ‘10, Franey, Denis Minaev ‘11 and Danny Benesch ‘10 also put forth strong efforts to secure the win.

The Poets next play Friday, April 11 at home versus Occidental College.  The SCIAC match is schedule to begin at 2:00pm.

"We will need to play great doubles and have a strong fan turnout from which to draw energy if we are to pull off the upset," added Bojalad.

Doubles:

#1 DeLong/Robertson (WC) def. Chiu/Ventura (CIT) 8-3
#2 Franey/Wyatt (WC) def. Chen/Yu (CIT) 8-3
#3 Narsimhan/Narsimhan (CIT) def. Minaev/Benesch (WC) 8-4

Singles:

#1 T. Wyatt (WC) def. V. Narsimhan (CIT) 6-2, 5-7, 6-4
#2 R.Chiu (CIT) def. J. DeLong (WC) 6-0, 6-1
#3 S. Robertson (WC) def. I. Shadrin (CIT) 6-4, 6-2
#4 L. Franey (WC) def. W. Yu (CIT) 6-3, 7-5
#5 D. Minaev (WC) def. L. Chen 6-1, 6-3
#6 D. Benesch (WC) def. E. Tai 6-4, 7-5

 Exhibition: M. Vo (WC) def. W. Cai 8-1