No. 7 Men to battle Columbus State University in first round of tournament
Although the regular season is over for the Georgia College men’s tennis team, the Bobcats have been selected to compete in the NCAA Regional Tournament. Head Coach Steve Barsby is aware of what the Bobcats need to do to prepare themselves for regionals.
“We’re going to know all the teams, so we’ll just work on familiarizing ourselves and getting a good game plan in regards to how we’re going to play them,” Barsby said. “We’re going to come out like we did in the Peach Belt Tournament. We played great in the Peach Belt Tournament we just ran into two tough teams.”
Manoj Kuninci | gcsunade.comJunior Jerome Leborgne and sophomore Johan Wadstein were both selected to represent the Georgia College men’s tennis team on the All-Peach Belt Conference Team.
“I think that in the doubles, we didn’t do good at the first start of the season,” junior Jerome Leborgne said. “We’ve done better on the Peach Belt Tournament but we have to let the other people make mistakes. We need to step on it and play for the win.”
Also going on in Bobcat tennis, Georgia College has selected two players from the men’s team to be on the All-Peach Belt Conference teams. The two players selected to be on the All-PBC Team from Georgia College were Leborgne and sophomore Johan Wadstein.
“It’s good, this is the second time. I earned it last year too,” Leborgne said. “I could play better, but it’s a good thing to be recognized for how you play.”
For the 2011 season, Leborgne has a record of 12-10 competing in the seeds of first and second singles. As for being selected for the All-PBC team, Leborgne looks at how he has improved individually over the year.
“I had a bad weekend the second weekend we played. I had three straight losses. It was the beginning of the season and I didn’t play well at all,” Leborgne said. “But I’ve done better after that, I’ve been getting more consistent. And I have to be even more consistent for next year.”
Wadstein has a record of 12-7 this year for competing in the top two spots in singles. For the NCAA Regional Tournament, Barsby feels that the biggest component that the men need to work on is their singles matches.
“Hopefully we can come out on top in the doubles and set ourselves up for singles,” Barsby said.
“I think that was one of the things that hurt us in the men’s matches in the conference is that we did great in doubles and didn’t get it done in singles so hopefully we can carry that all.”
The Bobcats record for this season currently stands at 14-8 overall, with a conference record of 4-5.
Looking back on the season, Barsby feels that the guys have had great team chemistry.
“The guys got along great on and off the courts. They really wanted to play for each other,” Barsby said. “We won some matches we shouldn’t have won we lost some we should have won but the guys really competed hard for each other.”
As the Georgia College men’s team heads to CSU on April 28 for their first NCAA Regionals match, Barsby sees how the team has improved over the past season.
“With the guys, their biggest improvement has been just believing against the top teams,” Barsby said. “We play a tough schedule at the start of the year. A lot of self doubt comes in when you’re playing teams in the top ten all the time but towards the end of the year they starting realizing that they can beat them if they play well.”
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