The Waynesburg University men’s tennis team recently came off of their first victory of the season the week prior against Pitt Greensburg into back-to-back PAC matches, with them splitting the two matches in that time.

On Wednesday, March 25, the men’s team downed Thiel 6-1 in a match that, similar to Pitt Greensburg, saw domination in the singles matches, with the only one out of the six to allow more than two wins in their respective match being Ethan Clawson in first singles, who won via opponent retirement in the third set. As for the doubles matches, the second and third doubles pairings of Josh DeFries and Andres Rojas as well as Tyler Gordan and Thomas Torcaso won their bouts. This win put Waynesburg at 2-3 on the season, and .500 in PAC play at 1-1 heading into Thursday.

The following day saw the men’s team drop their match against Washington & Jefferson 0-7, with the tightest match coming from Clawson in first singles competition. Despite what the score shows, head coach Randy Pettit was able to take away some factors from the day that he seems optimistic about going ahead.

“There were a lot of good things to take out of that match and clearly some things to work on,” Pettit said. “We didn’t back down from the competition and although the score doesn’t show it, we lost a lot of games at deuce.  I’m not sure we had one go our way yesterday.”

As far as the individual scores, he noted that Clawson and Gordan, as well as the team in general are not afraid to face the level of competition they met on Thursday.

“The one thing that has been consistent with all of the guys this season is the effort.  I love the fact that they are not afraid to go out and compete,” Pettit mentioned, while making note of two of his athletes in specific for not being afraid to be challenged. “Both Ethan and Tyler don’t have a lot of collegiate experience and they keep maturing each match.”

With some time away from competition, Pettit mentioned the intentionality he hopes for his team to have as they continue to work toward the final stretch of PAC regular season competition.

“We try to be mindful of that when we are at practice too. We are not scheduled currently until next Saturday, so we should be able to get some rest for the final push,” Pettit said.