Tennis ends losing streak
Utah State beat Weber State 6-1 Tuesday in Logan to snap a five-game losing streak.
After a disappointing 7-0 loss on Saturday to Montana State in the team’s first home match of the season, the win was a big one for the Aggie team.
Three weeks ago the team’s main facility, the bubble at the Sports Academy, collapsed because of the heavy snow.
Since that time there has been some undue stress from the shuffling of practices and games.
“There’s nothing we can do about the situation and it kind of wears on everyone,” Utah State Head Coach Christian Wright said.
Trying to switch things up, Wright used a new number one doubles combination of Dantley Young and Mike Banks.
While the new partners didn’t win they did come close, losing 8-6. Each doubles match was decided by 2 points.
Roshan Rasekhi and Joao Pinho won 9-7 at No. 2, while Hannes Schenk and freshman Brad Ferguson won 8-6 at the number three position.
With all that has happened, Wright said it was a good boost to get the doubles point so the Aggies were already up one heading into the singles matches.
The number one singles match between Schenk and Weber’s Jonathan Engelbrect was the only match to take three sets to finish.
In the first set Schenk broke Engelbrect’s serve twice to win 6-4. In the next two sets, Engelbrecht won the first one 6-4. But Schenk held out and was able to win the third set 6-4.
“I always had my chances to win but never really closed the matches,” Schenk said of earlier in the season. “I’m getting better at closing out matches.”
Rasekhi won his number two singles 6-3, 6-2.
At one point Rasekhi won seven straight games and was up 5-0 in the second before taking three more games to close out the match.
Rasekhi said his back is healing after reinjuring it in Idaho earlier this semester and he is better able to relax when he is playing and especially when he serves.
For the team many of the singles matches were very close.
However, many of the Aggies were able to pull out wins against the Wildcats. Banks was the only Aggie in singles play to lose. He fell to Weber’s CJ Anderson in two close sets 6-3, 6-4.
“As a team we were all together and played well even though we were in two different facilities,” Schenk said. “We’re finding solutions and that is one of the important things, if you don’t work hard you can’t expect to win.”
-krn@cc.usu.edu