Isabel Abarca
Contributing Writer
The Wooster women’s and men’s tennis teams both com-peted in a number of matches this past weekend. The men finished their fall season strong at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) Regional Championship in St. Louis, Missouri, while the women hosted Mount Union Univer-sity at home in the first dual match of the fall season.
The women went into the weekend with a goal to work hard and to gain some experi-ence, which will only benefit this young team as it moves forward. Bonnie Salmeron ’18 mentioned that only four play-ers, including herself, had pre-viously played in collegiate matches.
“We were playing at a much higher level than [we] are used to, and half of the team had never played a collegiate match before,” said Salmeron.
Although the Scots fell short against the Mount Union Pur-ple Raiders, they learned a lot from the 8-1 defeat. Even on the day of competition, the team continued to support each other and saw many im-provements throughout the matches. Beyond the score-board there was a lot of grit that was put into the matches, and this is something that the team will carry into their final tournament.
This past weekend was a stepping stone for the women’s tennis team. Squad camarade-rie came naturally, while the team’s performances in singles and doubles mathces will need to be improved. Salmeron ex-pressed that these challenging matches are all great prepara-tion for future competition.
The men are officially done with games this fall season, but they went out with an im-pressive finish. They came out of the weekend with a winning record after a long two days that consisted of four matches per day. This was a test of the mental and physical strength of the squad.
All in all, the Scots are hap-py with the outcome but are eager to work on their weak-nesses as well.
“Watching some of the best DIII doubles teams com-pete against one another gave us an opportunity to learn and adapt new tactics on the court,” said Davis Elkins ’17.
Elkins emphasized the strides they will need to take in the offseason to continue to build their team.
Both the men’s and women’s tennis programs have a pre-dominately young presence on their teams. With around half of the team composed of first years or sophomores, there are always challenges when it comes to collegiate experience. For the men, Ki-eran McTague ’19 went into the weekend strong and won a remarkable team high of four matches.
While both teams are in the building process, these recent competitions gave them the op-portunity to see what they have accomplished as well as what aspects of their game they need to focus on. The women’s team has its last fall event in Kalama-zoo, Michigan, to finish out at the ITA Regional Champion-ship this weekend.