Adrian Medrano
Staff Writer
The University of La Verne men’s tennis season came to an end this weekend after it lost two out of three matches in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championship Tournament last weekend in Whittier.
The Leopards, a team full of youthful potential, finished the season with a 13-6 overall record and placed seventh in SCIAC.
The Leopards fell to Cal Lutheran and Caltech and were able to put together a winning effort against Whittier for the second time this season.
The duo of Mario Backes and Michael Longanecker lost 8-6 in a tight doubles match against Cal Lutheran. The Kingsmen dominated the Leopards, shutting them out for the second time this season, 4-0.
Head coach Steve Bergovoy said that Backes and Longanecker “made a huge statement” in their match against Cal Lutheran’s No. 1 doubles.
The duo of Backes and Longanecker has been a concern of Bergovoy’s, with the two of them playing strong in singles matches, but struggling when they play together.
“They (Backes and Longanecker) finally gelled together,” Bergovoy said.
Longanecker lost, 6-2, 6-5, in his match against Cal Lu’s Quinn Calderon, the SCIAC player of the year. Despite the score, Bergovoy boldly said that Longanecker had his best match of the season.
Backes gave the Leopards their only point against Caltech in a singles match that came down to a third set. Backes won the match, 6-4, 3-6, 6-0.
Longanecker lost his match to a heavily rested Caltech player, who Bergovoy believes faked an injury in order to glorify his victory.
“He faked the injury so that he could say he beat our best player with an injury,” Bergovoy said.
Longanecker had just finished playing four hours of tennis before his singles match against Caltech. The Leopards managed to win each of its singles matches against Whittier in their 6-1 victory over the Poets, finishing the tournament on a winning note.
Sonny Samuel, Joseph Agell and team captain Kevin Winn, all seniors, won their single matches, ending their tennis careers at La Verne on a winning note.
“Kevin’s leadership was great this season,” Bergovoy said. “He did everything that was expected of him.”
After guaranteeing victory before last week’s match against La Sierra, Bergovoy and his team did not disappoint.
“Everyone came up really big against La Salle,” Bergovoy said. “It was a collective team effort.”
Bergovoy cited the performance of the No. 3, 4 and 5 singles players as instrumental to the team’s win.
The teams has showed strong team spirit and potential.
Despite the struggles that the Leopards faced this season, Bergovoy did not hesitate to say that this team had the best chemistry he has seen since starting at La Verne in 1998.
“This team had a whole lot of Leopard spirit,” Bergovoy said. “Every time they yelled our team cheer, I would get goose-bumps. They exemplified team spirit.”
Backes and Longanecker will compete in the Ojai Tournament at Ojai this weekend, the longest lasting amateur tournament in the world, in both singles and doubles matches.
Adrian Medrano can be reached at amedrano@ulv.edu.