With the end of the spring season looming for tennis, both the men and women’s teams are building a string of strong performances — the men defeating Samford, 5-2, and the women victorious over Mercer, 7-0.
Men’s head coach Yaser Zaatini said, “We’re starting to pick up momentum. I think that experience from getting beat up with all the highly ranked teams early in the year and all those away matches have given us a little better perspective on how to react to tough moments.”
The men’s team played Samford in a tough match-up on Sunday. The Bucs won two of the three doubles matches with the last left unfinished. They were also victorious in four of the six singles matches, where one match was lost because of an ankle injury to freshman Robert Herrera.
Sophomore Ismael Merino competed well in both singles and doubles, gaining the points on both ends for his team. However, Merino did not take much credit for the victory, saying that the win came from the whole team’s good performance.
“Individually, I think I won the two matches in singles and doubles but it doesn’t matter,” Merino said. “It matters more for me that the whole team is winning.”
Samford recorded a loss, but Zaatini thought there was more to the match that ETSU had left unfinished.
“The win is perfect,” Zaatini said.
“A win is much better than a loss. With that being said, I’m not extremely satisfied with the way we played. We left a lot of good things to be done. I think our potential is a little bit greater than what we played on Sunday. Obviously I think it has to do with the way Samford came out intense and put us to the test but I believe that we can play one better level …. We have the potential to be much better.”
The women’s tennis team put together a dominating performance against Mercer and extended a win streak for one of its players.
Junior Lyn Yee Choo extended her win streak to seven matches on Sunday.
“It means a lot to win every single match in a row,” Yee Choo said. “Some were tough, even though in the record book it may not seem as tough, but it is. I learn from every single match and I pulled through in all of them.”
ETSU won every doubles and singles match that went their way on Sunday and head coach Travis Sandlant saw the opportunity to prepare for the future conference matches.
“Every time you have 7-0, it’s always a good performance,” Sandlant said. “It was a match where we got to work on a few things and build the confidence for the next couple of weeks. We’ve got probably the favorites in Samford coming up here this weekend so we’re looking forward to the challenge, that’s for sure.”
Both men’s and women’s teams are currently undefeated in the Southern Conference at 3-0.
