Tennis Struggles in A-10 Conference Play

By JAKE GROGAN
STAFF WRITER

Tennis has its final home match of the year April 11 against Sacred Heart. (RAM ARCHIVES)

Tennis has its final home match of the year April 11 against Sacred Heart. (RAM ARCHIVES)

Fordham has dropped three straight after blanking La Salle on April 2, putting it at 4-13 on the season with only three matches remaining before the Atlantic 10 Championship.

The Rams had their best outing of the season against the Explorers, opening with two convincing doubles wins in the first and third spots. With the doubles point in hand, Fordham took four of the six singles matches, with the remaining two going unfinished thanks to a secured victory. Matty Najfeld, Kuba Kowalski, J.J. Tauil and Michael Puntillo, occupying spots 2-5, all won in two sets. Alastair Barnes at the number one spot and Pedro Alonzo at the number six spot did not complete their matches.

Any momentum gained from the convincing victory did not translate into success on the courts two days later, as the Rams scored only one combined point in a day that featured a doubleheader.

Fordham took a trip to Washington, D.C. to face its first conference foe, George Washington University. The No. 53 ranked Colonials opened play by taking five of the six singles points. Najfeld forced a tie breaker in the second set at the first singles spot, which he lost 7-2. The lone singles point arrived courtesy of Mischa Koran, who won his third set 6-1. The teams agreed not to play a doubles competition, since George Washington already had secured the victory.

The Rams took on George Mason later that day in Fairfax, Va., where they were blanked by another A-10 opponent. George Mason took the doubles point by winning two of three, with the Rams’ single victory coming at the second spot, where Alastair Barnes and Mischa Koran recorded a 8-6 win. Fordham would go on to lose three singles matches, one due to retirement after only one game in the first set by Kuba Kowalski at third singles. Michael Puntillo and Pedro Alonzo both dropped their matches in two sets, leading to three matches that were unfinished due to lack of incentive.

The unfortunate trend would continue the next day when Fordham stopped in Philadelphia on its way back to New York to play Saint Joseph’s University. The Hawks easily handled an exhausted Rams team, and Fordham lost 6-1. The loss was the third in two days and saw Fordham score only its second point in its previous three matches put together. The loss put to an end an awful three day stretch that saw little to no success.

The Rams’ remaining matches come against Hofstra, Sacred Heart and Stony Brook, with the latter taking place this Saturday and marking the end of regular season play for Fordham. The A-10 Championships come the following Thursday, April 17.

Comment

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s