After a winless Big Ten season last spring and an early exit at the Big Ten tournament, tennis season has finally arrived. While the weather in Evanston may be cooling down, coach Arvid Swan and his team are warming up for the 2009 campaign.
This year’s squad is one of the youngest in recent history, with three freshmen, two sophomores, one junior, two seniors and one graduate student. The Wildcats return their top four singles players from last season: senior Marc Dwyer, junior Alex Sanborn, graduate student Alexander Thams and sophomore Peter Rispoli. In addition, the Cats return sophomore Andrew McCarthy, who played both five and six singles last year. Also coming back for the Cats is senior Philip Kafka. Kafka played sparingly last year in his first year after transferring but showed much promise in several tournaments during the fall.
The freshmen, Tobias Reitz, Eric Spector and Joshua Graves, comprise Swan’s first recruiting class and tennisrecruiting.net’s 12th-ranked recruiting group for the class of 2008, second in the Big Ten behind Illinois. In the fall, the freshmen gave enthusiasts many reasons to look forward to the winter and the spring. Spector and Kafka finished a close second in Flight B doubles at the Wildcat Fall Invitational in September, while Graves and Sanborn claimed the doubles crown at the Milwaukee Tennis Classic. Reitz advanced to the consolation semifinals at the Big Ten Singles Championships in November.
The upperclassmen have also been impressive: Thams won the singles competition at the Milwaukee Tennis Classic, and Rispoli emerged victorious in the Flight B singles bracket at the Wildcat Fall Invitational. Northwestern produced mediocre results at their final two fall tournaments, as Sanborn and Dwyer were unable to get past the round of 16 at the ITA Midwest Regionals in October while Thams and Dwyer were stymied again in the round of 16 at the Big Ten Singles Championships.
The team compiled a regular season record of 7-16 last year, but they finished with a 0-10 conference record. The Big Ten does not figure to be much easier this year, as Ohio State (No. 1), Illinois (15) and Michigan (16) come into the season ranked in the ITA’s top 25. The Cats begin their season on Sunday at the Combe Tennis Center with a double header against Butler University and the University of Chicago.
