Vaqueros Men's Tennis edged by American River 4-5
March 16, 2024
SANTA BARBARA, CA - SBCC hosted American River College and after three and a half hours of both teams competing well, the last match was the deciding one as Beavers #5 Sharma beat SBCC Connor Schloemer 2-6, 7-5, 6-3.
The Vaqueros have been working at improving the doubles quality and today showed how that work has come to fruition. The Vaqs nearly swept the Beavers in doubles. Vaqs #1 Mauritz Seitz and Matias Lapidus kept solid return pressure on their opponents all set long. With Mauritz's strong serve weapon, the #1 Vaqs were able to come away with the victory 8-6. Meanwhile at #3, Vaqs Daniel Truong was serving bombs and Ada Guler showed his capacity to be creative with pace and moving the opposition off the net as the Vaqs won handily 8-3. The #2 match was closely fought from start to finish. After Beavers' Sivakumar held serve two times relatively easily, he looked poised to take the set serving at 7-6. That was when Vaqs' Connor Schloemer and Dominic Arnell put their heads together, hung tough and broke back to even the match. The doubles quality on court #2 was excellent, though the Vaqs could not consolidate the break and the Beavers closed out the set 9-7.
Leading 2-1 going into the singles against this level of an opponent was a great position to be in. Credit to the Beavers for playing solidly and taking 4 out of the 6 singles matches. Highlights were the Vaqueros #1 Mauritz Seitz defeating a very steady and physical opponent, Sontag. Mauritz has different ways he can impose his game; today it was his legs, his patience and his brains.
On court #3, Dom Arnell played smart by withstanding attacks by an aggressive approach and volley opponent. Dom was tough as nails today; he stayed calm when under pressure and did a great job of redirecting pace created by his opponent.
"Dom likes to grind by playing long backcourt points yet today due to the way his opponent's style, Dom showed sharpness in his footwork and shot making," head coach Danny Echt said.
"The long match was a good test for both teams and the effort, courage and sportsmanship were top shelf. Losing 4-5 is a hard pill to swallow, although there were a lot of positives today on display in performance and attitude and that will help us grow and develop," Echt concluded.
The Vaqueros play next at home on Wednesday, hosting conference foe Ventura at 2:00 PM.