Men’s Tennis

This weekend, Northwestern suffered two tough defeats against Big Ten opponents Minnesota and Wisconsin to conclude the regular season.

On Friday, the first outdoor match of the season, the Wildcats lost 7-0 against the No. 35 Golden Gophers (14-7, 7-3 Big Ten). The second match of the weekend ended with a 5-2 defeat against the Badgers (13-11, 5-6 Big Ten) on Sunday.

Unable to gain a single victory Friday, the Cats (9-16, 4-7 Big Ten) struggled against a Minnesota team on which half of the singles players rank in the top 100 nationally.

Nick Brookes, the No. 2-seed freshman who has a team-high 10 victories this season, faced No. 89 Matic Spec, falling to the Gopher in straight sets. Brookes said the losses this weekend were tough to take but are seen as growth opportunities. He said collegiate tennis is a learning curve and referenced an upward trajectory for the Cats, a team that will return its entire roster next season.

“Onwards and upwards, that is always the plan,” Brookes said. “You take what you can from it. Playing high up in the order, that has been different, it has been an experience. These are the sort of people you want to be playing because they expose you, you learn the most from these sort of matches.”

Brookes won his singles match Sunday in straight sets, and his doubles partner, junior Jason Seidman, clinched his match as well.

Seidman said this season was not the best for NU overall compared to last year’s Cats, who finished 7-4 in the conference. He said it was nice to end his individual regular season with a win against Wisconsin’s Lamar Remy on Sunday.

“I need to improve on aggression; it is definitely a factor,” Seidman said. “Whoever is a more aggressive player in matches ends up on top. My doubles game definitely improved a lot (this season). I was not expecting to play doubles, but now that I am, I am working with what I have. Overall, it has been good so far.”

Sunday’s loss extended NU’s losing streak to five consecutive games to end the regular season. Sunday’s match was incredibly close, however, with the Badgers scoring the doubles point in a tie-break and freshman AJ Joshi just falling short in a third-set tie-break at No. 6 singles.

Head coach Arvid Swan said he was pleased with the competitive effort in both singles and doubles matches Sunday, praising the Cats’ ability to take a more aggressive approach.

“I am really proud of our team, we have a young team,” Swan said. “We have always been a developmental program. Even (on) our best teams, it is not that we brought in guys all the time who were (of) the highest ranking, but they have developed and that is going to continue with this program.”

Assistant coach Chris Klingemann, who acted as interim head coach for just over a month in the middle of the season as Swan took a personal leave of absence, said he is very appreciative of Klingemann, praising his coaching abilities and the team overall.

Although Swan added that he would have liked to have more boxes checked in the win column, he said there is a lot in place for NU to be good going into the future.

“I really am happy with the mentality of the team today, and we are going to take it into the summer and work really hard so that next year, we can return to where we need to be, which is an elite team in the Big Ten,” he said.

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