Men's tennis dominates its opponents in home opener

Missing St. Patrick’s Day festivities in their own front yard? Disappointing. Going 26-1 in overall match play to open the spring season? A decent consolation prize.

The Middlebury men’s tennis team swept the visiting competition this past Saturday, dominating New York University 9-0, Oneonta 9-0 and Brandeis 8-1 in combined singles and doubles play. Ranked fourth in the country, Middlebury was favored in every match, yet still refused to get comfortable.

Astonishingly, the Panthers failed to lose more than three games in any of their nine doubles matches over the course of the day. Against NYU, not one of the top three Panther singles players lost a single game. The noon-time match was the first of the day and set the tone for what would be a brutal Panther onslaught.

First-seeded Andrew Peters ’11, second-seeded Andrew Lee ’10 and third-seeded Alec Parower ’13 handily dispatched each of their opponents 6-0, 6-0, while fourth-seeded Peter Odell ’10 and sixth-seeded David Farah ’12 lost just one game each en route to match sweeps.

In doubles play, top pairs Lee and Andrew Thomson ’10 and Farah and Eliot Jia ’10 both posted 8-2 victories over NYU’s top pairs, while the third-seeded doubles team of Peters and Conrad Olson ’10 steamrolled their opponents 8-0.

Oneonta State did not fare much better against the Panthers. Middlebury continued its undefeated day by again dominating each match. First-seeded Parower, second-seeded Olson and third-seeded Jeronimo Riefkohl ’11 all ran away with lopsided victories in singles play.

Michael Malhame ’11 and youngsters Will Oberrender ’13 and Chris Schlabach ’13 also earned two-set victories. In doubles play, Jia and Eric Vehovec ’12 led the way as all three doubles pairs for the Panthers won easily.

Later that night, Brandeis University provided the toughest test for Middlebury.

“Brandeis showed up with their best team in years and put up a strong showing,” said Lee. “But we came out with a lot of energy in doubles and took the wind out of their sails.”

Strong showing though it may have been for Brandeis, the team won just one singles match. Lee starred in the match as Middlebury’s number one singles and number two doubles pair (with Thomson), schooling all opponents convincingly. Peters and Odell each added an additional singles victory over Brandeis.

As unchallenged as the Panthers were, Chris Mason ’10 was still very pleased with the victory.

“The Brandeis match finished at 1 a.m., and it was a brutally long day,” he said. “But that gave us the ability to test a variety of different lineups, doubles teams, and gets lots of players some playing time. With 18 guys on the team this year — eight more than in the spring of 2006 — that’s important early on in the season.”

Middlebury next faces a tough spring break tournament in Claremont, Calif., playing seven matches over the course of the week. But a strong sense of confidence lends the Panthers some high hopes.

“This was the way we wanted to start heading in,” said Lee.