The University of Texas-Pan American men’s tennis program can finally take in a breath of relief after attaining its first win of the season during a road trip to Las Cruces, N.M. last weekend.
After a wearying 0-6 start to the season, UTPA played solidly Saturday, picking up a dominant 7-0 win against Western New Mexico in undoubtedly its best showing of the season.
“It felt like being on top of the world,” junior Aswin Vijayaragavan said. “We took care of business. We were looking for a win really bad and now having it we can lift the weight off of our shoulders and believe we’re a good team.”
Graduate assistant Maria Klokotzky said that in any tennis match if you win all the doubles, teams usually carry the positive energy to singles; evidently that’s what happened for the Broncs who completed the sweep.
“Everybody was so excited after doubles play that they just kind of rolled it into singles as well,” Klotozky said.
Before the inspiring win the Broncs had added another loss on Thursday to Northern Arizona University on a 4-3 decision. After Vijayaragavan (6-2,6-2) and senior Brett Bernstein (6-2, 6-3) won the first two singles matches, NAU responded swiftly by winning the next four consecutively. In doubles competition, Bernstein and his sophomore brother Beau Bernstein started the Broncs off with an 8-6 win while Vijayaragavan and senior Nirvick Mohinta followed it with an 8-3 decision.
With the score tied at three apiece the match came down to the junior pair of Marcus Dornauf and Andrew Irving in a doubles match against Patrick Schimmelbauer and David Flodberg. With a slim 7-5, 3-6, 7-6 (7-5) score the Lumberjacks (7-4, 3-0 conference) picked up their seventh win of the year.
The tough loss resonated strongly because of the hard preparation the Broncs have been putting in during practice. “We’re almost there,” the finance major said. “It was a heartbreaker losing against Northern Arizona because we expected to win. We were really close but yet too far. We’re a team and there is nobody to blame.”
UTPA (1-7, 0-1 in the Southlland Conference) didn’t celebrate its first win of the season for long as it rounded out the road trip with a 4-0 loss to New Mexico State University on Saturday.
“We’re playing well given that the majority of our opponents have been filled with teams ranked top 50 in the nation,” Taylor said.
UTPA hits the courts on Saturday against St. Mary’s in San Antonio.
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