Another win for the men’s tennis team has them excited and hopeful for an amazing season.
A sense of courtesy and eagerness could be felt on the courts last Thursday, as the Warriors served up a thrilling 7-2 victory against Long Beach City College for the second time this season.
The team’s next match will be today against Mt. San Antonio at home. The match begins at 2 p.m. The Warriors played them earlier in the season, a game which resulted in a 6-3 loss.
“The men’s team came out with reckless abandon,” Teila Robertson, assistant coach, said.
Once again, Usama Ehsan and his teammates Sammy Macias and Andy “The Spear” Stier performed with great strength and agility during their singles match.
“Our coach (Steve Van Kanegan) really pushed us yesterday during practice,” Sammy Macias, 19, said. “I think that the specific drills we worked on helped out with our win.”
The first match against LBCC two weeks ago was a warm-up for the team, but this last match tested their mental and physical abilities.
“Long Beach arrived today with a different kind of mindset,” Ehsan said. “The biggest difference between today’s match and last week’s match was that LBCC showed they really didn’t want to lose. Some sets seemed like they lasted forever and that just showed us that our opponents are becoming more and more consistent with their strength and strategy.”
Van Kanegan was at the women’s tennis match at LBCC and could not witness the men’s victory, but Robertson was present with words of wisdom and motivation.
“I’m very proud of their team spirit and pride. It really carried throughout their performance,” Robertson said. “I couldn’t have asked for anything more. They came and performed with great effort and in the end, they succeeded.”
Unfortunately, both Ehsan and Macias had to play LBCC with injuries they received in previous matches.
Ehsan said he entered the court thinking his Achilles strain was healed, but as he was warming up, he started to feel the “stinging sensation” that he had anticipated for.
For Macias, it was his chest that he had injured during the previous match against LBCC.
“I can still feel tension in my chest, but the pain I felt today can’t compare to the agony I was in last week,” Macias said. “Thanks to my injury, I didn’t practice as much as I wanted to, but all in all I felt prepared and ready to win.”
The men’s tennis team is constantly getting both stronger and smarter and the team’s leaders have helped shape the team into what it is today.
“In my opinion (Ehsan, Macias and Stier) are sound in their basic fundamentals and always have room to improve,” Robertson said. “As for their sportsmanship, they are leaders in that category and their teammates look up to them.”