Doubles dominate for Tennis

Second team doubles players senior Amanda Rosati and junior Mai Hashimoto sparked the Knights on Saturday Sept. 27 and Sunday Sept. 28 at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Tournament with an unbelievable upset. The pair took down the fourth-seeded duo from William Smith College of junior Katarina Kostovic and sophomore Hannah More 9-8—dominating the A flight champions 7-1 in the tiebreaker. Implementing head coach Jim Chen’s aggressive strategy of attacking the net, they won an unbelievable match against top-tier competitors. The pair was just put together this week by Chen. “They showed a lot of fight,” he said.

Other than Skidmore College, Geneseo advanced the most players (two) in the tournament to the third round of singles. Those two players were junior Cat Crummey and junior Marylen Santos—the unstoppable doubles duo that has embodied the Knights’ play this year: agile, communicative and aggressive.

“They have the ability to make this team fly,” Chen said.

Chen also said that third-team doubles partners sophomore Maggie Hale and senior Minxuan Yuan have used aggressive tactics in combination with their individual skills to boost themselves to an 8-2 record on the season in doubles play.

“I want to win using the correct strategy,” Chen said. To improve their success, the team practices with male tennis players who Chen calls “extremely talented.” The men play aggressively against the girls, giving them intense competition at game speed.

Making an interesting decision, Chen will bring in a sports psychologist this week to figure out why the team is having some difficulty with this new aggressive strategy in doubles.

“Most tennis players coming out of high school are singles players,” Chen said. His strategy contradicts what they have been taught for so many years in regards to how to play the court. His goal is to find the root of the problem and solve it before the SUNYAC Tournament begins on Oct. 10.

The Knights will visit SUNY Cortland on Friday Oct. 3 before playing their final home match before SUNYACs against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. RPI has a skilled team that the Knights will match up against well. This match could truly be a preview of how ready this team is to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament.

Chen earns third coach-of-the-year title and fifth SUNYAC title for tennis

With a decisive 5-1 victory over SUNY New Paltz on Oct. 13, the women’s tennis team claimed its fifth SUNYAC title in six years. The Knights, who finish the fall season at 11-1, also booked a trip to the NCAA tournament with their triumph in the tournament, which also included 5-0 wins over SUNY Plattsburgh and SUNY Oneonta.

Despite the margin of victory, Geneseo did not enter the tournament lacking adversity. An ankle injury to junior Dexuan Yuan, who plays second singles and teams with her sister junior Minxuan Yuan at second doubles, forced head coach Jim Chen to shuffle his lineup. Although they were held out of singles competition in the tournament opener against Plattsburgh, Dexuan Yuan and Minxuan Yuan won their second doubles match 8-1 to help Geneseo to a 5-0 victory.

The next day, Geneseo faced off with Oneonta. Again, Geneseo was able to win all three doubles matches. The wins that clinched the match for the Knights came from freshmen Karli Hollins, who won 6-2, 6-0 at fourth singles and Maggie Hale, who won 6-2, 6-2 at fifth singles.

The championship match against New Paltz saw some hotly contested doubles matches. While Hollins and Hale cruised 8-1 at third doubles, Dexuan Yuan and Minxuan Yuan fell at second doubles 8-6. With the teams tied 1-1, junior Amanda Rosati and sophomore Marylen Santos gutted out an 8-6 win at first doubles to give Geneseo the advantage.

The depth of the Knights’ team showed next, as the bottom half of the singles roster posted victories to defend Geneseo’s crown. Hollins won 6-2, 6-3 at fourth singles, Hale triumphed 6-2, 6-4 at fifth singles and Minxuan Yuan took a 6-0, 6-0 victory at sixth singles.

After the tournament, Chen quickly turned the attention on his players.

“The team peaked at the right time,” he said. “I can’t sing the praises of the team loud enough. When the chips [are] down, these players have a lot of fight in them.”

Even though his players were the ones on the court, Chen deserves recognition as well, as he was given SUNYAC Coach of the Year honors for the third straight year. With more than 120 wins over 12 years at the helm of the program, Chen has cemented his status as one of the top coaches in the league, if not the region.

In the spring, Chen will lead the team he regards as “pretty special” against bigger, tougher opponents in preparation for the NCAA tournament.

“I look at these next several months as a charm; I revel in this kind of stuff,” Chen said. “We know that we are relatively good, [and] we know that we can get better.”

While he acknowledged that it will not happen this year, Geneseo is moving ever closer to being able to accomplish what Chen said is his loftiest dream for the team: “Ultimately, we want to be national champions.”

Tennis competes for first time in regional tournament

In the short span of less than a decade, the Geneseo tennis team has gone from mere afterthought to formidable competitor on the regional stage. This progress showed on the weekend of Sept. 28, as the Knights competed in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association Northeast Regional Championships at William Smith College. Head coach Jim Chen said that Geneseo has not competed at the tournament recently due to a lack of competitiveness on the Knights’ part.

“Five, six, seven years ago, we would never win a match at this tournament,” Chen said in a phone interview.

In the doubles portion of the tournament, the normal third doubles team of freshmen Karli Hollins and Maggie Hale beat a team from Bard College 8-4 in the first round. Their next opponents, from Skidmore College, defeated Hollins and Hale 8-0, although Chen noted that this was Skidmore’s first doubles team.

The other Geneseo doubles pairing juniors Amanda Rosati and Minxuan Yuan lost their first match but recovered to win against Nazareth College’s first doubles team before losing in the quarterfinals of the consolation bracket. The win was especially noteworthy considering that the pair does not usually play together; Rosati’s usual partner is sophomore Marylen Santos, while Minxuan Yuan is her twin sister Dexuan Yuan.

In singles play, the Knights entered Dexuan Yuan, Rosati and Santos into a very strong 64-player field. Dexuan Yuan, fighting an ankle injury, lost in the first round 7-5, 6-1. Rosati won her first-round match by the same margin and earned the right to play the tournament’s top-seeded player Cristina Nunez of Ithaca College. While Rosati eventually fell 6-1, 6-3, the match was closer than the score indicated, according to Chen. He said that he believes that in a standard team-based match, Rosati would have a shot at beating Nunez.

Geneseo’s most successful player was Santos, who defeated opponents from St. Lawrence University, Elmira College and the College of New Jersey in order to make the quarterfinals, in which she lost to a player from Brooklyn College 6-1, 6-0.

Despite the score, Chen said, Santos’ last match was entertaining, well played and attracted quite the crowd. Coming off of a three-set victory against the College of New Jersey player, Santos “ran out of steam” but still left everything on the court and was able to contest each point.

Overall, Chen and his team came away from the tournament with both confidence and knowledge of areas that need improvement.

“It’s always a measure of where you are in a season when you can go to a tournament like that and play well,” Chen said. “We can hang with the best … I hope the players realize that they did something significant.”

He also said that the doubles teams still need improvement in order to complete the rest of the fall season without any blemishes. Geneseo has two regular season matches left before the SUNYAC tournament. Winning this tournament will automatically qualify the Knights for the NCAA tournament in the spring.

Tennis wins despite 'cold'

Despite putting a team with less experience than usual onto the courts on Sept. 20, the Geneseo tennis team still beat SUNY Cortland 9-0. The win closed out Geneseo’s regular season league schedule, with only two more matches and one tournament before the SUNYAC tournament. What was already a young team became even younger against Cortland, as sophomore Marylen Santos tried to fight off a particularly unpleasant cold. Santos was able to team with junior Amanda Rosati to get the win at first doubles, 8-4, but did not play her first singles match as usual.

Instead, everyone on the roster jumped up a spot and, in a display of the Knights’ great depth, had little trouble taking on the Red Dragons. Juniors Dexuan Yuan and Minxuan Yuan won at first and fifth singles, respectively, with similar scores of 6-1, 6-0. Rosati stepped up to second singles to win 6-2, 6-3, and freshmen Karli Hollins and Maggie Hale both won their matches at third and fourth singles, 6-2, 6-2, and 6-1, 6-0, respectively.

Perhaps the most satisfying win of the day came at sixth singles, at which sophomore Harpreet Aujla, normally an exhibition player, stepped up and won her match 6-0, 6-1.

“Because everyone moved up, it’s a more challenging match … but as you can see from the scores, we have a pretty deep team,” head coach Jim Chen said. “We won pretty decisively in singles even with [Santos] sitting out and everyone moving up. That, I think, was very significant.” He added, “Everyone pulled through very nicely.”

Chen said that normally freshman Veronica Skolnick would have earned the call-up, but as she was sick, he sent out Aujla, who earned praise from her coach for her play in a team meeting after the match.

Just as Aujla stepped up to win her match, Hollins and Hale have become significant contributors to the Knights’ wins. Chen said that he typically has one or two freshmen that immediately step into starting roles on the team.

“Karli and Maggie have fitted in extremely well, both in terms of the team concept and in terms of their individual play,” he said. “They are seasoned, they are well-coached and they have a lot of experience.”

Hale, from nearby Perry N.Y., played on the boys’ team during high school, which Chen said has made her “a great retriever” and “very consistent.” Hollins, from the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, N.Y., is, according to Chen, “a very accomplished, high-level, powerful player. She has a lot of upside.” Chen added that both players will have their roles increased as they gain more experience.

Next up for Geneseo is the Intercollegiate Tennis Association East Regional Tournament at William Smith College in Geneva, N.Y. Chen said that many of the best teams from the region will be there, so the tournament will be a good test for his team before the Knights look to claim their third-straight SUNYAC tournament title.

Tennis shuts out SUNY Oswego

The women’s tennis team wasted no time making a statement this fall, traveling to SUNY Oswego on Friday Aug. 30 and dispatching the hosting Lakers, 9-0. The Knights won a SUNYAC title in the fall of 2012 and earned a berth to the NCAA Division III Tournament in spring 2013 on their way to a 15-4 record. Former co-captains Katie Talbot ‘13 and Sarah Shields ‘13 graduated, but this year’s younger version of the Knights has potential to be just as successful as their predecessors.

“We think it’s going to be a challenge, but my fond hope is that we will rise to that challenge,” head coach James Chen said in a phone interview. Chen is entering his 12th year as head coach of the Knights, and in anticipation of his team’s relative inexperience – four freshmen without any seniors on the 11-member squad – he said he purposely scheduled some difficult matches this year in order to test his team.

After starting the fall season against Oswego and then opening the home slate on Thursday Sept. 5 with local rival Nazareth College, the Knights will participate in the Mary Hosking Tournament at William Smith College. Later this month, Geneseo will participate in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s Northeast Tournament, where it will close out its fall schedule with two interesting matches: a visit to perennial power Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a rare match against Division I Siena College.

Some might question the prudence of such a difficult schedule, but Chen said that he has full faith in his young team. Already, he said, he can see improvements in the team, especially in the leadership qualities exhibited by the two new co-captains.

“[Junior] Amanda Rosati and [sophomore] Marylen Santos have really stepped up,” Chen said. The duo, who were key players on the team last year, are now two of the more experienced players on the team, looking to guide the Knights to success once again.

Santos, who is entering her second year at first singles, and Rosati, last year’s fourth singles player but now at third singles, cruised thrvough their singles matches with identical 6-0, 6-1 scores before beating Oswego’s first doubles team, 8-0.

Junior twins Minxuan Yuan at sixth singles and Dexuan Yuan at second singles never dropped so much as a game, winning their singles matches 6-0, 6-0 and then pairing to triumph at second doubles, 8-0. A pair of freshmen, Karli Hollins and Maggie Hale, earned the final three victories for the Knights.

While it is very early in the season, Chen said that he is excited about the direction of his team.

“There is a progression that I have in mind as a coach,” he said. “In a timely fashion, we are getting better.”

He said that more practice time spent on doubles teams has paid dividends already. This is an area that could have helped the Knights last year in the NCAA tournament when they lost all three doubles matches en route to a 5-3 season-ending defeat by the College of New Jersey.

All that remains now is for the Knights to, as Chen said, “Keep it going in a positive trajectory” all the way through the season.