This past weekend, the DePauw men’s tennis team opened their season with two incredibly difficult matchups against Division I powerhouse Butler University on Friday, and Division III’s fifth ranked team, the University of Chicago on Sunday. The Tigers fell to Butler 7-2 and Chicago 8-1.
The Butler match featured wins at the No. 2 doubles from the team of seniors John Daeske and Matt Santen, and at No. 1 doubles from seniors Dan Rodefeld and Patrick Farrell. The lone win in the Chicago match from the Tigers came from No. 1 singles, where Rodefeld held off Chicago’s Nicolas Chua, the No. 22 ranked singles player in all of Division III.
Rodefeld’s performance in the two matches garnered a lot of attention from his coaches and teammates, as he contributed two of the Tigers’ three wins from this weekend. “Dan’s showed a lot of hard work and dedication so far this season,” Head Coach Scott Riggle said. “I’m excited to see what he’s going to do and see how he develops from here.”
Although both matches ended in losses, the team is still very optimistic for the season, and views this weekend a huge growing opportunity. “Considering the tough competition that we had this weekend, we held our own,” sophomore Greg Frauenheim said. “We fought as hard and we could have pulled off a couple more wins in those matches that lasted three sets.” Most of the matches this weekend were very competitive in nature, and although many did not result in wins, the players played the matches well. The close matches against Butler included Rodefeld losing in three sets at No. 1 singles (6-4, 1-6, 6-2), and the team of seniors Nate Wallace and Harold Martin losing at No. 3 doubles (8-5). There were also several close losses in the Chicago match as well, including sophomore Petar Barcot loss in three set thriller in No. 5 singles (4-6, 6-2, 10-3).
The Tigers are preparing themselves for NCAC play with a very difficult non-conference schedule. With matches against top tier teams across all divisions of college athletics, the tennis team is exposing themselves to the best talent possible early in the season, so they can continue their development as a team. “Starting against better teams allows us to get match though early and really allows us to see what we need to improve upon as we get later into the season,” Farrell said. Tougher matchups often times expose the weaknesses within a team, which will help the team as the season gets started and they begin to practice harder to improve.
The Tigers see this weekend as the first step to achieving their season-long goals. After a narrow loss to Denison University in the conference tournament a year ago, this improved team is looking to win the tournament this year, or earn a national tournament bid through a group C bid.
“We have a really good shot at the tournament this year,” Frauenheim said. “We’re much stronger at this point than we did last year and our senior class is looking great.”
The Tigers will look to pick up their first team win this weekend, as they host Centre College at home on Friday at 4:30, and the College of Wooster at home on Saturday at 6:30.