Tigers squeak by ULV in 4-3 win
Campus Times
March 12, 2004
Sunny Samuel of the University of La Verne lost his singles match, 8-6,
against Occidental College, Saturday. Overall, the Leopards added another defeat,
4-3, to their 2-7 season record.
In recent non-conference action, the University of La Verne men’s tennis
team came away on the short end of things, losing a heartbreaker to Occidental
College, 4-3, Saturday at the Nancy Blickenstaff Tennis Pavilion in La Verne.
The loss drops the Leopards’ record to 2-7 overall and 1-4 in the Southern
California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference with a tough stretch of tennis
to be played.
The Leopards played four matches in five days this week and with the Southland’s
heat wave this is no easy task.
The team has gone 1-1 on this four-match run, gaining a second win over La
Sierra University, 6-1, but falling to Wabash College, 4-3.
The Leopards played Waynesburg College Thursday, but results were not available
at press time.
The fourth match for the Leopards is against Colorado College at 2 p.m. tomorrow
at home.
“Our record really doesn’t reflect how good our team really is,”
head coach Steve Bergovoy said. “We have lost a lot of heartbreaking matches
that we probably should have won, but we don’t have the depth from top
to bottom.”
Currently the Leopards are seventh in the SCIAC standings and will return
to conference action April 2 against Cal Lutheran in Thousand Oaks.
Despite their sub-par record, the Leopards still find motivation within to
keep their heads up for the rest of the season.
“Even with our struggles we go out there for the love of competition,”
senior Jason Cortez said. “Also for the love of the sport, we just go out
there and try the best we can everyday.”
In doubles play Saturday, the No. 1 duo of Chad Rodriguez and Cortez dispatched
Occidental’s tandem of Brent Baker and John Vigorita, 8-5, to start the
match off on the right foot.
For their tough efforts and strong wins, Rodriguez and Cortez were both named
SCIAC Male Athletes of the Week last week.
“Despite our ups and downs as a team, the guys are really closer this
year than they have ever been,” Bergovoy said. “It starts with our
top guys, Chad and Jason, they really help everybody really push each other
no matter how bad things get.”
The No. 2 doubles team, consisting of Sunny Samuel and Josh Horwitz, followed
suit for the Leopards with its 8-6 victory over Seth Brown and Michael Guice.
The final doubles match went to the Tigers pair of Nick Shapiro and Alexander
Candia, 8-4, defeating Alvaro Alvarez and Kevin Nguyen.
Singles competition went in favor of the Tigers as they won four of the six
matches, which propelled them to the victory.
Rodriguez handled his business defeating Baker, 4-6, 6-3, 7-5, in a three-hour
marathon match after completing his doubles match.
The other singles victory for the Leopards was turned in by Horwitz who defeated
Vigorita in straight sets, 6-3, 7-5.
Also in singles action was Samuel who was defeated in straight sets in his
match with Brown, 6-2, 6-2.
In other matches Cortez fell, 6-1, 6-2, to Guice. Rounding out the match was
Nguyen and Muldrow who both lost their matches to Shapiro and Sean Wong, 6-4,
6-0, and 6-3, 6-0, respectively.
“As a team we have a lot of growing to do,” Bergovoy said.
“Coming up we have a lot of out of state matches where we need to win
to get our record back to .500, so some of our guys will have a shot at making
it to regionals and nationals,” he said.
