As the Oregon tennis teams head into the home stretch, the men are hurting from their lack of experience and the women are hurting from their lack of depth, but both are determined to finish the season on a positive note.
“We’ve had a couple of outings lately that we didn’t play as well as we wanted to, but we’ve had two amazing days of practice – probably two of the best days we’ve had all year,” Oregon men’s coach Nils Schyllander said. “We’ve got high hopes going into this weekend.
“The way we’ve been practicing, I’ve seen something in their eyes, they believe they can beat Stanford and Cal.”
The Oregon men (9-9 overall, 0-3 Pacific-10 Conference) take on No. 60 Stanford (5-11, 1-1) and No. 51 California (11-7, 4-3) at home this weekend, hoping to rebound from the 6-1 and 7-0 drubbings suffered at the hands of UCLA and USC last weekend.
The Ducks were blown off the court by the Trojans, but Schyllander said he’d picked out some bright spots from his team’s performance against UCLA.
“No. 1 doubles against UCLA was probably the best doubles we’ve played all year, even though we lost,” Schyllander said. “I think (the UCLA doubles team of Phillip Gruendler and Benjamin Kohlloeffel) might even be 20-0 and we took them to a tiebreaker.
“And Ric (Mortera) had match points against a guy who’s top-45 in the country, and Geoff (Embry) had a big win. So I felt like we took a step in the right direction in the UCLA match, and took a step back in the USC match.”
These halting steps represent significant progress for an Oregon team that has not fielded more than one upperclassman in the lineup this season.
“We have the youngest team in the country. I can’t figure any other team starting five freshmen and a sophomore,” Schyllander said. “But we don’t want to hide behind youth either. We’re talented enough to upset some teams, and they’re learning what it takes.”
Meanwhile, the 31st-ranked Oregon women (11-7, 2-5) have problems of a different nature. After 18 matches, the Ducks’ six starters are showing signs of fatigue.
Nursing a shoulder injury, No. 1 singles player Dominika Dieskova lost to Washington State’s Ekaterina Burduli on March 25 even though she’d easily defeated Burduli earlier this season.
The Ducks lost 5-2 to the Cougars, then rebounded with a 5-2 win over Washington before falling 7-0 to both UCLA and USC last weekend.
Dieskova’s shoulder is better now, but the Ducks were plagued by new injury woes when sophomore Claudia Hirt sprained her ankle in practice on Wednesday.
Hirt will not travel with the team this weekend and her absence from the lineup gives the Ducks two unfavorable options: start sophomore walk-on Tina Snodgrass at Hirt’s regular No. 6 spot, or default the court.
Snodgrass – who played club tennis prior to this year – has only played one dual match this year: she lost 0-6, 6-4, 6-2 against Eastern Washington’s Sayaka Yoshimoto.
“If we do happen to play Tina this weekend, it’s gonna be rough for her,” Reber said. “Eastern Washington was a little bit weaker. But San Diego and San Diego State are both pretty good teams. So we haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet.
“If you default the court, you put a little more pressure on the other team. It’s like, ‘Hey, we only have five healthy kids. If you can’t beat us with that…’ So it’s just kind of a mental thing.”
The Oregon women take on No. 65 San Diego State today, and play San Diego tomorrow.
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