Men’s tennis opens with three titles

The GCSU men’s tennis team started its 2009-10 season successfully, taking home three titles this past weekend at the Windstream GCSU Men’s Fall Championships.

A pair of sophomores stole the show for the Bobcats. Bobby Angelucci took home one of the singles championships, while Leo Bernardes captured one of his own.

After winning their respective singles crowns, they teamed up to win a doubles title as well.

“We want to win every tournament we play,” head coach Steve Barsby said.

To many, Barsby’s expectations may sound a bit lofty, but after a 2008-09 season in which the Bobcats finished second in the Peach Belt Conference Championship tournament and earned a No. 4 national ranking, these aspirations appear right on the mark considering the squad’s talent.

Angelucci beat out Mitchell Midkiff of Young Harris College 6-1, 6-3 to take his championship. Bernardes ran into some trouble in his finals match, needing three sets to beat out Augusta State University’s Henrique Boturao, but got the victory 6-4, 2-6, 6-0.

In their doubles final, Angelucci and Bernardes played in a hard-fought match against Wu Ferraz and Lipe Ramos of ASU and finally prevailed 8-5.

Barsby said that the fact that his team is led by mostly upperclassman is not necessarily an advantage, but the experience is good, especially after last year. This proved to be correct, as the three championships won by GCSU were captured by his two sophomores.

Even with all of these achievements for the team, student support at the weekend’s matches was minimal. Aside from coaches and other players, the number of students in attendance could have been counted on two hands.

This was not a surprise to sports information director Al Weston, as he mentioned that the only people who normally attend matches, aside from players and coaches, were normally friends and family of tennis players.

“We would like to have more support for all of our teams, including tennis,” Weston said.

Many students are unaware of when many of the matches occur.

“I had no idea that there were matches going on this weekend,” junior criminal justice major Chris Carey said.

Weston added that the team has accepted the low attendance as the norm for now.

“Tennis is just a tough sport to understand for the average sport fan,” Weston said.

The next matches for the men’s team are at the Intercollegiate Tennis Association’s Southeastern Regional tournament, held at Francis Marion College from Sept. 18-21. The GCSU women also kick off their season at the event.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 18 2009. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry