Tennis picks up first win of the 2017 season
The Saint Joseph’s University men’s tennis team faced off against Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) on Feb. 4. The Hawks defeated Carnegie Mellon 6-1 and earned their first victory of 2017. Senior Kyle Chalmers and sophomore Dan Tan picked up a win in the first doubles flight. In the third doubles flight, freshman Beekman Schaeffer and senior Valentijn van Erven picked up the victory to secure the doubles point for the Hawks.
“Kyle Chalmers, our number one captain, gives us 110 percent every time and his positivity is a great contributor with the leadership that he gives,” Head Coach Ian Crookendon said.
In the singles matches, St. Joe’s won the first five of the six total flights. Sophomore Andre Fick, junior Peter Dewitt, Chalmers, and Tan each picked up wins for the Hawks in three sets. Dewitt’s win came with a supertiebreaker. Schaeffer also picked up a singles win for the Hawks in straight sets.
The match against CMU was really intended to be a warm-up for the Hawks’ match against Duquesne.
“At this stage of the season, it’s their second match of the season and we needed to get another match under our belt before we played Duquesne,” Crookendon said. “When we arranged to play Duquesne, we were trying to find another match. Carnegie Mellon was the one that worked out.”
A day later, the team took on Duquesne University and dropped the match, 5-2. The Dukes defeated St. Joe’s in each of the doubles matches. Chalmers and Schaeffer each picked up singles wins for the Hawks, but it wasn’t enough to win the day.
“Once Duquesne got the doubles point, they had confidence going into singles play, and though the guys fought hard, we went down,” Crookenden said. “We had some strong matches from Kyle, our captain, and Beekman to get us on the board, but it was too late to stop Duquesne from clinching the win.”
The women’s tennis team struggled last weekend and lost against both opponents. Against Carnegie Mellon, junior Maureen Devlin and sophomore Isis Gill-Reid won the second doubles flight for the Hawks, but St. Joe’s would drop the other two to give CMU the doubles point. Senior Alex Zachem and freshman Katherine Devlin each picked up a singles win in straight sets. Unfortunately for the Hawks, these would be their only points of the day resulting in a 5-2 loss. The women were unable to earn a point against Duquesne, dropping the match, 7-0.
Despite the Hawks winning just one of their combined four matches, Crookendon believes there are positives to take from the weekend.
“Against Carnegie Mellon, we were missing two starters,” he said. “We had showed that we had depth. We showed that when we’re missing a regular starter, there are people who are capable of stepping up and proving themselves. We have the keys in place for better results.”
Crookendon likes to look at the tennis program as one whole team rather than a men’s team and a women’s team.
“We like to consider the program not necessarily as two separate sports or two separate entities,” Crookendon said. “We do a lot together. We train together, travel and play when we can. The sport’s the same. The court’s the same. Strategies are the same.”
Both the men’s and women’s tennis teams will travel to Easton, Pa. to take on Lafayette College on Feb. 11.
