The Resilience and Joy of Our Panthers (12-3) Has Been on Full Display

Hard to believe how fast time flies when we are in season, and our action-packed spring continues to reveal more about where our squad is and where we are headed! Since we last posted, we have gone 3-1 in NESCAC conference play and are setting a pace to be charging ahead for more exciting matches. Two overall themes have been consistent, the depth of our team continues to impress as well as our ability to stick together and demonstrate grit and resilience when needed. We have recognized that we need to continue building our collective skills and strengths, particularly on the doubles side of the ball, and cannot wait to keep putting in the work!

The squad, always together getting ready to rumble!

We also want to highlight and remind our alumni that our alumni weekend matches will take place on April 27-28 (and our senior celebration will take place the evening of April 27th as well). We cannot wait to see many of you there!

Williams College (Midd lost 4-5)

Robby Ward serving it up to set up partner Neel Epstein to hunt volleys at the net!

On a sunny, albeit windy and cool afternoon, we took the courts to take on a fun matchup with Williams. We lost a couple of tightly contested doubles matches at #2 and #3 doubles, but were buoyed by an impressive performance at #1 doubles (Ward/Epstein) who took out the #2 ranked team in the region to put us on the board! In singles play, we roared out to take four first sets, but came up one singles win short of being victorious. Our wins came at #4-6 singles (Epstein, Harris, and Lewis respectively). Although we put our hearts on the line and competed as we always do, we knew immediately after this match we wanted to use it as a learning experience to propel us forward. The fire was burning stronger than ever, and this is what makes coaching this group such an enjoyable task! See the full box score here.

Connecticut College (Midd won 9-0) and Trinity College (Midd won 9-0)

In our next two NESCAC matchups, both on the road, we came out firing from start to finish! It is not always easy to play excellent tennis when you are ranked ahead of an opponent, but we managed to do just that. We won at all 18 spots across the two matchups, but more importantly brought a great sense of energy and enthusiasm across these matches and really competed together and for each other. That is one of the most special parts of college tennis, using the court-to-court momentum and taking advantage of the unique camaraderie that has been a part of the Middlebury Tennis program for many decades! The box scores can be seen here and here respectively.

Wesleyan University (Midd won 6-3)

Noah Lewis digging in for a backhand volley (photo from spring break)!

In our third consecutive away NESCAC match (of what will be five in a row), we took on a Wesleyan team that came in with a great deal of confidence after beating Williams the day before. Although we came out firing pretty well jumping out to leads on a couple of doubles courts, we ended up losing all three matchups in doubles including having a match point in one of them. If our memory is correct, we had not completed a comeback after being swept in doubles since 2019. However, with the deeply felt knowledge of the resilience and capability of our team this year we could feel that this match was far from over. Sure enough, we pulled together in an incredibly impressive performance to win all 6 singles matches in straight sets! The connection between our players was palpable from court-to-court and from their teammates on the sidelines. The clinching 5th point came from freshman Noah Lewis at #5 singles who finished just a few points ahead of Robby ward who earned our 6th and final team point at #2 singles. Shout outs to Julian Wu (#1 singles), Neel Epstein (#3 singles), Aidan Harris (#4 singles), and Hugh Hentschel (#6 singles) who also prevailed in their singles matches to set the stage for the clinching match. The full box score can be seen here. 

Upcoming Schedule (NOTE: ALUMNI WEEKEND IS APRIL 27-28, SENIOR CELEBRATION is April 27)

Next up on our journey two more weekends filled with regular season conference matchups, with the NESCAC tournament to follow. Let’s go Midd!

Go Midd!

- Middlebury Tennis Coaching Staff