The men’s tennis team took their talents to Hilton Head Island, S.C., and Atlanta to play five matches over spring break.
The Tigers opened up their road trip with a dominating 7-2 win over Carleton. Both the first and second doubles teams won over the Knights.
In singles play, sophomore Dan Rodefeld won in straight sets while junior Pat Ferrell rallied for win. Matt Santen, John Daekse and Nate Wallace also picked up wins.
In their next match, the Tigers got another big win over the Oberlin Yeomen. The Tigers trailed 2-1 after the doubles matches, but picked up the slack with wins from first through fifth singles. Rodefeld won his first singles match 7-5, 6-2.
“Personally, I felt I played a very consistent match and was able to pick up a big win over a highly ranked opponent,” he said.
He was impressed with the team's performance throughout the match.
“The Oberlin match was a nice win for us. It's always good to go out against a conference opponent and play well," Rodefeld said. "We started off a little slow in doubles but we definitely picked it up in singles. As a team I believe that was one of our best singles performances this season.”
Wins by Farrell, Santen, Wallace and Greg Frauenheim also helped seal the Tigers' victory.
The following match had the No. 34 ranked Tigers facing No. 16 Wisconsin-Whitewater. The Tigers lost a close match to the Warhawks 5-4. The duos of Farrell and Daseke as well as Wallace and Harold Martin got the Tigers off to a good start and to a 2-1 advantage heading into the singles matches. Unfortunately, the Tigers could only win two of the six singles matches.
The Tigers then traveled to Atlanta to play out the remaining two matches of their road trip. Sadly, Georgia wasn’t as kind to the Tigers as South Carolina was.
The first opponent for the Tigers was NAIA No. 1 Georgia Gwinnett. The No. 1 NAIA squad defeated the Tigers 9-0. All six singles matches were lost in straight sets.
The Tigers then faced another top ranked D3 opponent when they played the Emory Eagles. DePauw saw similar results in this match, losing to the Eagles 5-0.
“Playing those teams really just showed us what we need to improve going forward,” Farrell said.
The Tigers ended the road trip with a 6-7 record and a lot of experience under their belts. They return to the court on April 7 when they travel to Butler.