The Baker University men’s tennis team went 2-1 over spring break with victories over Missouri Baptist College and Ottawa University and a loss to Johnson County Community College.
On March 8, the Wildcats fell to JCCC 9-0.
“Johnson County is always a tough matchup, a two year school that gets Division I or II talent,” head coach Joe Ahmadian said.
The men’s No. 1 singles player, freshman Gianfranco Moncada, played a close match against Johnson County’s No. 1, Spartak Rahachou, before losing the third set in a tiebreaker 11-9.
Moncada and the Wildcats bounced back the next day to defeat Missouri Baptist 5-4 in a contest that came down to the final match.
“(Sophomore) Ryan Gleue stepped up when we were tied 4-4,” Ahmadian said. “He lost the first two games, but then he got hot and won 12 games in a row.”
The men’s team made it back-to-back 5-4 victories the following weekend by edging out Ottawa on the Braves’ home courts.
The Wildcats went on to face another NCAA Division II opponent in the University Nebraska-Kearney Tuesday, but lost 9-0. BU is 2-2 on the season.
The Baker women’s team went 1-2 over spring break, with its victory coming against Missouri Baptist and defeats at the hands of JCCC and Ottawa.
Just like the men, the women were shut out by Johnson County Community College 9-0. Freshman Bre Cunningham won her first set 6-3, but fell in the next set before losing another 11-9 tiebreaker to Johnson County’s Madi Staats.
The Wildcats responded the next day by defeating Missouri Baptist 8-1 in St. Louis, Mo. BU went 5-1 in the singles matches and 3-0 in doubles.
“They took care of business,” Ahmadian said. “I didn’t quite expect us to win that big, but it was impressive.”
However, Ahmadian was not pleased with how the Wildcats played the next weekend against Ottawa.
“We didn’t play all that well coming back from break, which should be a wakeup call for future matches, especially for the women,” he said. “We’ll look at this further in the season, and look at how much we need to improve. It’s one we should have expected to win on both sides, but we didn’t quite perform up to our ability.”
The women tried to bounce back from the loss to Ottawa, but like the men, lost to Nebraska-Kearney 9-0 Tuesday.
Ahmadian is still confident that the men’s and women’s teams are on the right track, though.
“I’m looking forward to the rest of the season,” he said. “I like our overall mindset going into conference play.”
