Happy New Year 2019: Middlebury Tennis Edition

Happy 2019 to our Middlebury Tennis family! First, we want to wish everyone a Happy New Year filled with excitement and fun. We also imagine that everyone is starting to get that warm and fuzzy feeling only associated with knowing that the spring tennis season is just around the corner! As a coaching staff, we feel incredibly thankful to be able to work with our current group of fourteen players and are thrilled with the journey that lies ahead. We also want to announce a resounding welcome back to Alex Vanezis, who has returned from a semester abroad in Japan!

Vanezis '20 pictured on the left with
fellow Juniors  Brach '20 and Samets '20

As our players returned to campus after the winter holiday, there was a palpable feeling of enthusiasm as the official start to our spring season is about 6 weeks away. Since the end of the fall season, the Panthers have made sure to set specific training goals for themselves that they are working to achieve to be fully prepared for Spring. Our captains, Cole Sutton, Peter Martin, Lubomir Cuba, and Noah Farrell will be leading the charge for us this season and we will be leaning heavily on their experience this year. The coaching staff is also incredibly appreciative for the leadership already on display from the juniors, sophomores, and freshman as well. Very fun when our group is motivated from top to bottom!

Our Senior Panthers are a very tight knit
group leading the way for us this year!

Echoing our excitement for this season, the ever popular DIII tennis blog is beginning to release season previews of many DIII teams. Although the season preview for Middlebury has yet to be posted, it is fun to read about the potential lineups and schedules of many of our competitors: http://www.division3tennis.com/blog/. As a reminder, the coaching staff also would like to clarify that we are not the authors of the blog, but do appreciate their work giving DIII tennis more publicity!

2019 Schedule

Most importantly, we also wanted to share with you our finalized schedule for the spring (http://athletics.middlebury.edu/sports/mten/2018-19/schedule). As we did last year, we have a wonderful schedule planned with many matches that will allow us to test ourselves against some of the toughest competition in DIII, as well as some challenging matches against DI and DII programs.

As always, our match schedule really starts to heat up on our spring break trip when we will be returning to Claremont, CA again.

Fundraising: We are currently behind in our annual fundraising efforts for this critical and important trip. Here is the link for anyone who is interested in donating to support our journey: http://sites.middlebury.edu/middgoal/2015/08/27/mens-tennis-training-trip-2/

Regular Season Schedule Highlights:

3/16 2:30pm Brandeis College Middlebury, VT

3/25 3pm UC Irvine Irvine, CA

3/26 2:30pm Azusa Pacific Azusa, CA

3/28 4pm Pomona Pitzer College Claremont, CA

3/30 12pm CMS Claremont, CA

4/6 12pm Wesleyan Univ Middlebury, VT

4/14 12pm Williams College Middlebury, VT

4/20 2pm Bowdoin College Brunswick, ME

4/27 12pm Amherst College Amherst, MA

Potential Postseason Schedule:

5/3-5 All Day NESCAC Championships Middlebury, VT

5/9-11 All Day NCAA 1st-3rd rounds TBD

5/20-25 All Day NCAA Championships Kalamazoo, MI

Thanks for reading along and stay tuned for more blog updates soon!

Go Midd!

The Middlebury Men’s Tennis Coach Staff

Panthers Win Two Titles at TuftsDeis

The Panthers finished the last of our four Fall tournaments with many strong performances and the coaching staff was extremely pleased to see that the Panthers played their best tennis all Fall. Even though we still have many levels of improvement ahead, we are definitely heading in the right direction as a group.

A follow-up to last year’s MIT tournament, the TuftsDeis invitational demonstrated an amazingly high level of competition with eight top tier DIII programs competing.  The Panthers collected two of the four possible titles!

A Flight Champion Noah Farrell '19 

Farrell '19 serving big!

Noah Farrell led the way grabbing the A flight singles crown with five consecutive wins over elite DIII players including a straight set victory over Sean Wei (ranked #9 in the nation after last season). Noah's competitive spirit and ability to switch and use his left hand when on the dead run makes watching his play particularly special and exciting. Winning the B flight doubles crown was Aleks Samets and Andre Xiao. The pair partnered extremely well with Andre tracking from the back and Aleks cleaning up at net, each only having their serve broken once all tournament long en route to their title.

B Flight Doubles Champs Andre Xiao '21 and Aleks Samets '20

                         

The rest of the Panthers also put in some great work including….

·      Stan Morris winning a match versus Austin Barr (ranked #30 nationally).

·      Nate Eazor and Stan Morris got their first win as a doubles pair.

·      Andre Xiao picked up two singles victories over MIT and Bowdoin.

·      Weston Brach picked up two singles wins over Tufts and Brandeis.

·      Weston Brach and David Vilys got a doubles win over Bowdoin.

·      Adam Guo picked up two singles wins over Tufts and Wesleyan.

·      David Vilys picked up two singles wins over Wesleyan and Brandeis.

Eazor '21, Sutton '19, Samets '20, and Guo '21 fueling up!

A complete description of the tournament can be seen here: http://athletics.middlebury.edu/sports/mten/2018-19/releases/20181014sys4em

Ring Ceremony

Last weekend we also had a final celebration for our 2018 NCAA Championship with our ring ceremony and reception. Made incredibly special by the return of our three recent graduates (two traveling all the way back from Europe), Will de Quant, Kyle Schlanger, and Timo van der Geest were back in the house! It was an incredibly special event to share memories and reminisce over such a fun and successful year. The lifelong bonds that were formed last year were evident, and the uniquely close camaraderie of the Panther program continues to be a hallmark of our culture.

Beautiful weather for our ceremony at the homecoming
football game.  Midd won by 1 point over Bates!

Another critical component of our success that was again on display was the wonderful and amazing support of our parents both near and far. Three players had parents who joined our celebration including Weston Brach, Nate Eazor, and Cole Sutton. Of course, the parents in attendance helped to document videos and pictures they distributed via our parent group chat so that everyone could feel the love and fun from wherever they were! As always, huge thank you to our incredibly supportive group of parents!

The jewelry!

Off-Season Training

The off-season will be a critical time period where we need to get fully healthy and also continue to build our games and hearts to be fully prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. We look forward to handing the responsibility of off-season training to our four senior captains. Noah Farrell, Peter Martin, Cole Sutton, and Lubomir Cuba will play a huge role in ensuring that each and every Panther player is doing everything they can to get ready for the Spring. Championships are won in the off-season! From on court, in the gym, on the track, and mental training the Panthers will continue to work each aspect of the game to try to give our group the best chance of being successful when it matters most toward the end of the year.

Wishing everyone in the Middlebury Tennis Family a wonderful rest of the Fall!

The Middlebury Men’s Tennis Coach Staff