Dear Slug Tennis Fans,
It is hard to believe our team season has come to an end as the journey has been compelling, challenging, and most of all fun and inspiring. One of my regrets is that we can not continue our work as we were clearing improving as we hit the finish line. Our NCAA Regional, clearly the toughest in the country, featured two teams that had beaten us during the regular season: Cal Lutheran (ranked number four in the country) in the first round and Claremont McKenna College (ranked number three in the country) in the second. We entered the tournament ranked number six.
In our earlier encounter with Cal Lutheran at home coming out of the ITA finals, we got swept in doubles. This time around we won at one doubles with Brian Pybas and Marc Vartabedian defeating the top ranked team in our region by a score of 8-6. At three doubles freshmen Parker Larsen and Andre Halabi defeated a very strong team 8-4 to give us a 2-1 lead heading into singles. In singles we got on the board first with Brian Pybas smoking our region's top player, Andrew Giuffrida by a score of 6-0,6-2. Next off was Marc Vartabedian who was leading 6-0,5-2 when his opponent decided he' had enough and retired. The clinching match in the 5-2 decision came from Freshman Parker Larsen who won his match at five singles 6-2,6-1. Silvio Chiba and Andre Halabi were both up a set when the match was decided.
On to the regional final where we faced host CMS who had crushed us 8-1 a little over five weeks ago during our spring break trip. During this earlier match we did not get more than four games in any singles set and lost two doubles 8-1 and three doubles 8-2. This was a different story! Marc and Brian dominated at one doubles winning 8-0 in about 20 minutes! Parker and Andre led 7-5 before falling 9-7 and we had 6 match points at two doubles where Freshmen Erich Koenig and Senior Shaun Herry played brilliantly against the Ojai doubles champions from CMS. We ended up losing this match in a tiebreaker which helped them achieve momentum going into the singles.
Brian Pybas continued his brilliant play beating the regions number two ranked player, Robbie Erani, by a score of 6-1,6-2 to even the match at 2-2. At this point we had lost the first set at two singles in a tiebreaker and had won the first set at 3 and 5 singles while dropping the first set at 4 and 6. Silvio Chiba and Andre Halabi lost their matches to put us down 2-4 but Erich Koenig battled back from a break down in the third to get us back to 3-4 with a brilliant 6-4 on the third victory with Parker and Marc still battling. Parker ended up losing in three sets for the final margin of 5-3 thus ending our team season.
I am extremely pleased with our effort as we were clearly in position to win this match where we were no where close only 6 weeks ago! The improvement in our team recently and over the season as a whole was breathtaking, and the motivation, positive team chemistry, and determination going forward is very exciting. With our incredibly high expectations I am disappointed to not be taking the team to the final site but am motivated to get there next year!
Brian and Marc will be going on to the NCAA Individual Championships and with the way they are playing they will be tough to stop. Having won the ITA National Indoor Team Championship with such a young group and watching them continue to grow and improve is exciting to all the coaches.
I would like to personally thank all our wonderful fans and boosters for all their amazing support. Special thanks to the Koeings for hosting such a fine dinner and to Gary Pybas, Kendal Larsen, and the Vartabedians for your support. Great to see Slug Alums Matt Seeberger and Jeff Fong and thanks to the many Alums and fans that followed our journey.
Bye for now but news of the NCAA final site and a season wrap up will follow.
Best wishes, Coaches Hansen, Parmelly and Mark-Griffin
