Bright Future For the Crimson Despite Loss

Like the fall foliage that helps define first semester here in Cambridge, in a matter of days, the entire makeup of a team can change.

This time last year, the Harvard men’s tennis team readied for a series of fall tournaments similar to this year’s schedule that starts this Friday at the Northeast Invitational in Providence, RI.

But contrary to last year, Harvard must take on the added challenge of playing without former co-captain and No.1 Alexei Chijoff-Evans, who left the team about two weeks ago, shifting the Crimson lineup substantially.

“We just have to be ready for anything that happens,” captain Aba Omodele-Lucien said. “We have to focus and try to give it our all and not really worry about [other factors].”

Coming off of a season in which Harvard finished second in the Ivy League with a total record of 12-10 in dual matches, the Crimson remains optimistic.

“We’ve got wonderful depth this year,” Harvard coach Dave Fish said. “And I think the challenge will be to see who’s capable of playing at the top end of the lineup. We have a number of guys who are capable of growing into that role.”

The youthful Crimson team, on which eight of 13 players have fewer than two years of experience at the college level, must look to younger players and a key core of veterans to win big matches if it wants to compete with the other Ivy League teams.

“Youth is wonderful because it brings great enthusiasm to the team,” said Fish. “As coaches we simply try to help [young players] understand that they’re going to stumble along the way and, if they’re enthusiastic and committed, they’re going to pick themselves up and they’re going to learn from each outing.”

In the wake of a solid spring, the squad has set big goals for its performance in the 2010-11 campaign.

“In the fall, we just want every guy to give 100% in practice and the individual tournaments so that they develop every day,” Omodele-Lucien said. “[Our goal is] to be prepared for the spring season…. I’m very confident that if we do that we’ll fulfill our spring goal of winning the Ivy League.”

Last year, Harvard was part of a three-way tie with Cornell and Yale for second place in the league, so those teams are clear targets this year. But the rivalry between the Crimson and three-time defending Ivy League champion Columbia has always had a little extra flavor.

“The last three years we’ve come second place to Columbia,” Omodele-Lucien said. “So I’d say they’re our biggest rivals.”

“We beat Columbia early in the season each of the last two years and they took us a little bit later,” Fish said. “They buckled down to work after they lost to us and came to play. It’s one of those really good rivalries where neither of us like to lose, we both want to kick ourselves when we do, but that’s what makes college tennis great.”

The tandem of Omodele-Lucien and sophomore Christo Schultz is ranked 36th nationally in doubles to start the year and is coming off of a spring season in which the pair was named to the All-Ivy League first team.

The duo of then-sophomore Alistair Felton and then-freshman Andy Nguyen earned All-Ivy League second team honors last season.

The team also boasts the addition of three rookies and a strong core of nine returners.

Harvard looks to use the fall season of six tournaments for individual development and preparation, as dual matches don’t start until the spring.

“Tournament play has been one of those ways that people whose games are maturing find out that they’re ready for another level up,” Fish said. “It’s harder to find a dual competition, so the fall is really designed to get everybody enough matches at different levels that, as coaches, at the end of that day we have a better idea of what our lineup would look like in the spring.”

“We also get to experiment with doubles,” Fish continued. “See who fits well with each other, see what kind of chemistry works out, see who’s putting in the extra work during the less active period where we can’t run a team practice. It gives us a really good skeleton of where our team should be.”

—Staff writer Catherine E. Coppinger can be reached at ccoppinger@college.harvard.edu.