Serving it up on California clay

Tennis returns from their annual road trip

By Peter Melling /// Sports Editor

There was no vacation to be had for the men’s and women’s tennis teams. They traveled to Southern California for a spring break road trip in which they faced some of the toughest teams in the country. During this trip, the women’s team went 3-0, while the men’s team went 1-2. How were the teams able to handle the California teams, and how will this prepare them for the rest of the year?

The Californian teams provided some of the harshest competition that the Pioneers have faced to date. The men faced Chapman University (ranked 40th in the country), Pomona-Pitzer University (ranked fourth in the country) and Occidental College, while the women played UC Santa Cruz, California Lutheran University and Occidental College. While the men’s team lost to both Chapman (7-2) and Pomona-Pitzer (8-1), they did pull off a win against Occidental (5-4). The women’s team plowed through their competition, winning each match with a score of  8-1.These results, as well as their top place in the Northwest Conference, led the Intercollegiate Tennis Association to raise the women’s team’s national ranking from #36 to #31.

There were plenty of standout performances during the trip, including Aurora Garrison’s (’16) non-stop battles against her opponents at Cal Lutheran, which she won 6-1 and 7-6, Christine Eliazo (’18) and Kacey Incerpi’s (’18) scrappy doubles victory against Occidental, which they won 9-7, and Parker Nichols’ (’17) 6-2 and 6-3 wins against Chapman.

Now, both teams must take the lessons they’ve learned into the rest of the regular season. The women will face the #25 team in the nation (and second-place in the NWC), Whitman College, while the men will make a push for a top three spot in the final conference standings against Whitman College, Pacific University and George Fox University. It will be a tough fight to the finish for both teams, but the experience they have gained against the Californian teams will certainly help propel them through the final stretch.