Sunday was supposed to be Senior Day for Northwestern, but it should have been called Schaechterle Day.
As the Wildcats (10-8, 4-3 Big Ten) prepared to play Iowa, the family of senior captain Adam Schaechterle was in attendance with his parents and grandparents in the stands and his identical twin brother on the other side of the net playing for the Hawkeyes.
As coach Paul Torricelli said during the Senior Day ceremony, “Normally, Senior Day is the last home match of the season, but we made an exception because we had the fighting Schaechterle’s here.”
During the ceremony, which came between the doubles and singles matches, Torricelli gave out a framed media guide cover and said some words about his captain.
“The impact Adam had as a leader and player,” Torricelli said, “cannot be put into a statistic.”
Schaechterle’s experience paid off Sunday even before he officially received his recognition from Torricelli.
Junior Matt Christian and Schaechterle won a hard-fought doubles match against Iowa’s Brett Taylor and J. P. Ritchie 8-6 for the No. 1 doubles point.
“I felt Matt and I played one of our best doubles matches ever,” Schaechterle said. “Doubles today was pretty fun because everyone was pretty excited, especially because my brother was here.”
Due to the prolific play of Marc Dwyer and Juan Gomez, Aaron Schaechterle could not match his brother’s success as the Cats pulled down an 8-3 win.
NU won both of the doubles points this weekend and claimed victory in all of the doubles matches against Iowa, giving optimism for the team as they compete in their final three regular season matches.
“The doubles really came around for us today at an important part of the season,” Torricelli said. “Especially for Matt and Adam playing well in the tough conditions.”
The cheerfulness Sunday was missing Saturday when the team lost 5-2 to No. 40 Minnesota, losing five of six singles matches.
Against Iowa the singles came around and despite several of the matches going to three sets, the Cats won each convincingly.
Freshman Alexey Evstratenkov won his third straight match at No. 6 singles against the Hawkeyes 6-4, 7-6 (5).
The Cats’ Juan Gomez lost his first set Sunday but fought back to win the second, and despite falling behind 4-0 in the third, rallied to win six straight games to give the Cats their third point of the day with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 victory.
Cold weather usually brings injuries or forces players to warm up during their matches, but junior Christian Tempke fought off both a sore wrist and stiffness to scrape out a three-set victory over Iowa’s Bart van Monsjou 7-6 (8-6), 6-3 to clinch the match for the Cats.
“I was looking to play quick points, but with the weather, it was hard to do that,” Tempke said. “I had to change strategies and try to keep (van Monsjou) on his backhand.”
With Dwyer and junior Willy Lock winning their matches, all the attention at the Vandy Christie Tennis Center was focused on the duel between Schaechterle and Taylor, who were the last players on court.
As the match progressed both players each allowed one break. The second set eventually went into a tiebreak where Schaechterle persevered to hold off his opponent 6-3, 7-6 (5) to go undefeated on Senior Day.
“I am very proud of Adam,” Torricelli said. “He and his family have been great for Northwestern tennis.”
Reach Brian Regan at [email protected].
