Men's Tennis Gets Back on Track at Home

After dropping two close matches last week at Purdue and Indiana, the Crimson came out swinging this weekend against Boston College.

The Harvard men’s tennis team (5-4) encountered few difficulties as it cruised to a 5-2 victory over the Eagles (4-6) Friday night.

“There’s nothing like getting a ‘W,’ honestly,” Crimson coach Dave Fish ’72 said. “You can talk about learning from defeat and everything else...but if you look at any team, they take enough losses, it shakes the confidence.”

“I don’t think [the losses] affected us that much,” freshman Andy Nguyen said. “We felt confident in ourselves that we could win. There was no looking back at those matches.”

There certainly was no evidence of broken confidence on Friday, as Harvard played strong in all nine matches.

Despite losing the top doubles match, 8-3, the Crimson was able to earn the doubles point as sophomore Alistair Felton and Nguyen teamed up to win, 8-5, at No. 2, and junior Alexei Chijoff-Evans and freshman Joshua Tchan held on for an 8-6 victory at the No. 3 doubles spot.

“[BC’s] No. 1 doubles team is the No. 1 team in the region right now,” Fish said. “I thought we might be ready to take a shot at them, but they played great against us at No. 1. Fortunately, our No. 2 and No. 3 teams are really good. Our No. 3 team, which has lost a couple of matches against good competition, was able to save the day [today] by securing the doubles point.”

Harvard was able to secure most of the singles points without much difficulty, losing only at the No. 2 and No. 3 spots.

Junior Aba Omodele-Lucien came out strong at the three seed, making quick work of the first set, with a 6-0 win. But his opponent bounced back to win the next two sets, 6-1, 6-4.

“[Omodele-Lucien] has been playing in a spot in the lineup where he’s played pretty stiff competition and where there’s nowhere to hide,” Fish said. “He’s dropped a number of matches, and probably his confidence isn’t at the best place right now.”

Omodele-Lucien has gone 1-6 on the season while playing at the No. 2 and No. 3 spots.

“He won the first set and took a little bit of the pressure off [in the second],” Fish added. “That’s all the [Eagles’ player] needed to start the match rolling. Even at the end, [Omodele-Lucien] tied it up at four all and couldn’t quite do it.”

Chijoff-Evans continued his strong play at the No. 1 spot, winning the first set, 6-4. The second set wasn’t so simple. Tied up at 5-5, the set could have gone either way. But Chijoff-Evans was able to buckle down and clinch the match, winning the next two games.

“Alexei was in a little trouble in the second set—he really had to nail it down and dig deep to win,” Fish said.

Felton was unable to win at the second seed against a very tough opponent, losing in straight sets, 6-4, 6-4.

“We knew we were facing an uphill battle, and [the BC player] proved to be more consistent than Alistair,” Fish said. “Ali’s been playing well, and I think his game is moving in the right direction. I think we’ll continue to see him get a lot stronger this year.”

Nguyen was able to overcome a heavy-serving opponent and some mistakes to win the fourth spot, 6-3, 6-4.

“I knew that I wasn’t playing my best,” Nguyen said. “I wasn’t retuning as well as I should have...I had to fight through that, and I ended up doing pretty well.”

Freshman Christo Schultz was able to win the fifth seed in two straight sets, 6-4, 7-5, while captain Mike Hayes overcame a second-set lull to win in three sets, 6-2, 1-6, 6-1, at the final singles position.

“All in all, I was very pleased with the guys,” Fish said. “They’ve been working hard. I think we can continue to get better, but the Ivy League will be the real challenge.”