Men’s tennis drops first match of spring season

Ethan Gullet

Alan Sanson prepares to return a serve. The men’s tennis team split their first match of the spring season in California.

Kennedy Caskey, Staff Writer
January 28, 2020

The UTSA men’s tennis team suffered its first loss of the season (2-5) against the University of California, Davis at the Marya Welch Tennis Center in Yolo, California, this past Saturday.

In their first game of the spring season, doubles pair Juri Reckow and Sebastian Rodriguez started the day strong with a victory of 6-2 against UC Davis’ Ivan Thamma and David Goulak. Following their teammates’ win, senior Kai Breitbach and junior Javier Rodriguez secured a victory of 6-3 against Chethan Swanson and Dariush Jalali. Junior Javier Gonzalez and sophomore Alan Sanson did not conclude what was looking to be a close match against Daniel Landa and Andrei Volgin, ending with a score of 3-5.

The Roadrunners were not so fortunate in their singles play, losing five out of six matches. Senior Juri Reckow was the sole winner in the singles category, tallying an impressive win of 6-2, 6-4 against opponent Andras Necz. Although UTSA faced a significant setback in singles, the team played with confidence and vigor, many of the ‘Runners splitting sets in their matches.

Breitbach fell short 2-6 in the first set of his match against Ivan Thamma but quickly recovered in the second set, coming 7-5. In the third and final set, Breitbach lost 3-6 against his opponent. Javier Rodriguez notched a win in his first singles set, with a score of 7-5, but was defeated by Chethan Swanson, 6-3 and 6-4, in the following sets. Similar to Breitbach and Rodriguez, Javier Gonzalez played a three-set match, losing 4-6, 7-6 (8-6), 2-6, in a close game against Volgin. Sanson fell short, 4-6, 6-7 (5-7), in his match against Jayaraman.

Summarizing the day adequately, new head coach Sergey Avdeyev concluded, “We won the doubles point but didn’t start well in singles and lost some momentum. We came back to win Juri’s court, had three matches go into three sets, but UC Davis just outplayed us, winning more deuce points and the important points at the right time.”

The UTSA men’s tennis team will compete again on Feb. 1 against Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.