The men’s tennis team crossed the Mississippi to victory this weekend, defeating St. Cloud State University (Minn.) 6-3 and St. Olaf College (Minn.) 7-2 on Saturday.  The double victory puts the team at an overall 3-1 record for the season.

“Everything went really well,” said senior Lars Olson, who plays No. 2 singles and No. 1 doubles with teammate and junior Chris Kuna. “Our doubles teams have always been and were especially strong this weekend.”

The doubles teams indeed performed well, sweeping every match they played.

In the team’s 6-3 victory over St. Cloud, the only three losses came from singles. All three — no. 2, 5 and 6 — were taken to the third set.

“One thing we really tried to work on this week was movement and our mental game,” said sophomore Florent Marco, who plays number four singles and number three doubles. “We were focusing most on showing no emotion; we’ve found that (opponents) don’t do as well when you don’t show them what you’re thinking.”

Marco, alongside partner and sophomore Ben Robertson, picked up 8-4 and 8-3 wins to finish out the first half of the day’s doubles matches.

The team then ended the day with a 7-2 victory of St. Olaf. Again, said coach Tom Gillman, mental strength was a key to their success.

“I always say that the mental game is absolutely integral,” he said. “Overall, I was pleased with our performance; our willingness and fight were great factors. We also planned to work hard on movement, which is something I saw being done well.”

Against St. Olaf, four singles matches went into extras.

The number two doubles team of senior Eric Wollum and junior Dirk Van Rybroek took a sweeping victory of 8-3, with Olson and Kuna following closely with an 8-4 win over their number one opponents.

“All of us improved a lot in style from last week,” Olson said. “None of us let ourselves feel defeated or get lazy, which really worked our opponents.”
Although it’s still early, Gillman has hopes for a successful season to come.

“I’m not much of a predictions kind of guy,” he said. “But what I can say is that I’m very satisfied with the tradition of the team that we’ve kept up. Our tennis team has always been made of classy, coachable, team-oriented players and right now, that looks like it’ll definitely continue.”

“From this point forward,” he went on to say, “all we can do is to continue down the right path and keep setting high goals.”

The Blugolds are set to host Bethel University (Minn.) and the Milwaukee School of Engineering on Saturday starting at 10 a.m.