The women's tennis team beat Oberlin 8-1, and lost to Chicago, 4-5, this past weekend in its second tournament of the spring season. The men on the other hand lost to No. 29 Chicago (5-4), but beat Earlham, 5-4. Defeating Oberlin and finishing so close behind Chicago, the fourth-ranked team in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association, DePauw is reaching success and learning from past matches.
Head coach Scott Riggle was impressed by how the women played in their single matches.
"I think there were some singles positions on the women's team that were able to grind the girls down," Riggle said. "Our ability to fight out long points was nice to see."
Although the Tigers won against Oberlin, the opponent challenged DePauw in the doubles matches.
"Oberlin is what we call a trap match because we underestimate them but they're a really good team," junior Meg Crowley said. "We didn't have our heads in the game as much as we should have. They were really offensive. During the whole match we couldn't get in a rhythm, but we pushed through it."
In singles, sophomore Maggie MacPhail won all three of her matches after working on her serves and groundstrokes while still staying competitive and aggressive against players from other schools' top lineups.
"In the Oberlin match I was steadier and more consistent and I wasn't trying to hit as big of shots as I have before," MacPhail said. "I wasn't going as close to the line. I was trying to grind out the points more."
University of Chicago is one of DePauw's biggest rivals and surprised the Tigers with their variety on the court. It was also DePauw's first outdoor match and they were unprepared for the wind and change of climate.
"They completely took us out of our element," Crowley said. "They mixed up formations and mixed up their shots. They played really smart and were coached really well on how to play Claire [Marshall] and I specifically. We didn't come out prepared."
Number one player on the men's team, junior Sam Miles, suffered a tough loss (6-3, 61) to Sabada Deepak on the Chicago team. Number two singles player, junior Ben Kopecky, beat Bhargava Ankur from Chicago in a tiebreaker winning 10-8. Overall, the men won three single matches but lost all three double matches against Chicago.
After losing to Chicago, the men beat Earlham (5-4) giving the team two wins out of the eight teams they have faced so far in their season.
Kopecky, Chris Bertolini and Alec Kaczkowski won their singles matches while juniors Sam Miles and Kopecky, Andrew Kahn and Eric Vannatta won their doubles matches.
The Tigers have to keep moving forward be prepared to win their next tournament against the No. 29 Redlands on March 23.
"I expect them to have all the positions to continue to get their shots and work for the next couple weeks on adding variety to their game while getting more consistent on our doubles movement," Riggle said.