On Saturday, Sept. 9, both men’s and women’s tennis traveled to Frostburg State where neither team came out with the victory as the men were defeated 5-4 and the women were swept 9-0.

Although the men lost, head coach Ron Headlee was impressed with his team performance

“We were real close, I thought we were going to be able to pull two matches,” said Headlee. “I thought we played well for the first time, I thought our two doubles played real well match’s, then the third team were two guys that never played together.”

The men had two matches go to the third set but eventually went to Frostburg. One of the matches were junior Jonah Cooper who lost 6-3, then won 6-3 and lost 10-7.

Although that was not the match up Headlee highlighted, he looked at first year player junior Brain Drake who was able to go three sets and 10-3 in the final set which ended up being the key decision.

“The first time [Brain] ever played it came down to him,” said Headlee, “There was a lot of pressure on him, it was his first time he ever played tennis like that.”

Headlee mentioned that Drake struggled later in the match because he had never been in that late of a tennis match and his arm tired down.

“He played really well and practiced really well just getting him the competition sometimes he played well in the first set and then his arm started to get little tired,” said Headlee. “Then he lost a little bit on his serve going into the tie breaker set.”

The women on the other hand struggled to win sets and without returning Aubree Brown who was their best player last year, they are in a rebuilding year.

“We found out this summer she wasn’t going to be able to play, you know that’s going to be a big hole,” said Headlee. “That’s one bad thing about tennis, you move everyone up the line and you are playing in a position against a harder opponent each time the strength isn’t there right now, it just makes it harder, I just tell the girls play harder and don’t get frustrated.”

Headlee knows that as the team rebuilds this season with newer players, it’ll be difficult to reestablish the program and he knows players are going to be in difficult positions.

“It’s going to be a struggle for us all year, we have our number one out probably not going,” said Headlee. “Everyone have to play up the line and that’s really rough on the girls, they’re playing positions they probably shouldn’t be playing in.”

But even with some rebuilding, Headlee said he is staying positive and thinks his team can win.

“I also think that we have a good shot of winning against Muskingum if we could go out it would be nice to go out on win on that one,” said Headlee.

The men’s tennis team will stay home against Muskingum next, on Saturday, Sept. 16. For the women, the team will compete against Thiel past publication date then go on to play Grove City on Thursday, Sept. 14.