BY Jack Ravitz
Senior Staff Writer
The Men’s and Women’s tennis teams began their seasons on Sept. 14 and 15. Both teams played in an opening season tournament with the men traveling to the University of Connecticut for the UConn Invitational, and the women played at Quinnipiac University for the Quinnipiac Invitational.
The teams saw a lot of positive results throughout the two day tournament, with great performances on both sides during match play. Head coach William Boe-Wiegaard, who coaches both teams, saw a lot of promise and loved the team’s mental toughness.
“Both teams are extremely focused. More focused than I’ve experienced in the past two seasons towards wanting to win and have success,” said Boe-Wiegaard. “It’s great that they are able to fight and be competitive right from the start with this level of play we are up against.”
The men’s team lost to UConn on the first day of the tournament but were able to fight back during the second day of play, putting together a clean sweep against Merrimack College. Key performances on the men’s side came from senior captain Seji Hosokawa who won a total of four matches during the tournament.
“It was really good to see the guys progressively get better over the course of the weekend and compete hard,” said Hosokawa. “The first couple of matches were difficult for most of us, because we weren’t competing as much during the summer, but it was a great first tournament.”
On the women’s side, senior co-captain Brianne Lauria who played number 1 singles and junior Lauren Santarsiero, who moved up and played number 2 singles, had singles victories against Providence College and Bryant University.
“This past weekend being our first tournament together was great for team bonding and building up our team chemistry,” said Lauria. “We had a lot of positive results and moments that we can build off of going forward.”
During the offseason, Boe-Wiegaard added a fitness test along with the team’s first year strength coach Brian Gibson. Both Boe-Wiegaard and Gibson worked together to make a plan to improve the teams speed and agility.
“The plan is to try and come up with more of these types of tests to increase these minimums to make the program stronger and raise the standard each day,” Said Boe-Wiegaard
These tests included a mile run and senior co-captain on the women’s team Adrianne Alfonso attested to the new fitness test being installed as a positive addition.
“It’s a good way for everyone to set goals and then have the lay out and plan to eventually be able to achieve them during the course of the season,” said Alfonso.
Boe-Wiegaard also changed the format of how he picked the lineups for the opening tournament. Never doing this before, he had both teams play in an inter squad round robin giving everyone an opportunity to compete for a spot by playing everyone at least once.
“It was a great way to examine where everyone was at in terms of their game. Instead of me subjectively saying you’re placed here in the lineup, they all got an equal chance to play for each spot and earn it,” said Boe-Wiegaard.
The teams will travel to in-state rival Quinnipiac for their next match on Oct. 5. Although it’s early in the season, both teams are already eyeing and looking ahead to the NEC tournament in April.
“The daily goals of just working on the little things, staying positive, and always battling start now and always leads up to the NEC’s in April,” said Lauria.
