The Maple Leafs’ 2009 men’s and women’s tennis season ended this past week with the Mid-Central Conference (MCC) Tournament at Indiana Wesleyan University. The tournament was played indoors due to weather. The women had a particularly rough tournament schedule, never facing a seed lower than #2, facing some of the top players from around the MCC.
Hannah Groff, the only senior on the roster, played her final collegiate match at the MCC Tournament. Groff fell in both her singles and doubles matches, facing #1 seeds in both matches. The Leafs did not manage to win any of their quarterfinal matches and finished the tournament in a four-way tie for sixth place with Bethel College, Spring Arbor University and University of Saint Francis.The women completed the regular season with a four-match win streak and finished with an overall record of 4-8 in head coach Doug Gossman’s first year on the job.
The men also struggled in the tournament, finishing in seventh place out of eight with four team points. Benjamin Basnet, a sophomore, easily won his singles quarterfinal and semifinal matches before finally falling to the top-seed in the championship match. Alejandro Davalos, the third-seeded freshman, won his quarterfinal singles match in three sets. Davalos then joined forces with Chanuk Algama, a junior, for the doubles quarterfinals, and they were victorious in an enormous upset, beating the #1 seed pairing from Indiana Wesleyan. The men finished the season with an overall record of 5-7.
All Mid-Central College Conference selections were also voted on at the tournament this weekend, and Aaron Sutter, a senior, and Rachel Lanctot, a junior, earned their first ever all conference selections. Sutter and Lanctot are the top singles players for the Maple Leafs.
