The Grand Canyon University men’s and women’s tennis teams were both victorious in their season opening matches today against Montana State-Billings at the
Paseo Racquet Center in Glendale, Ariz.
Click
here for video reaction from GCU head coach Greg Prudhomme and highlights from today’s matches.
The men, ranked 10
th in the preseason ITA national poll and 2
nd in the west region poll, knocked off the Yellowjackets, 8-1. Montana State-Billings was predicted to finish second in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference preseason poll.
The Antelopes started quickly taking all three points in the doubles round. The No.1 team of
Ahmad Saleem and
Arjun Bal used an 8-6 tiebreak to win their match 9-8.
Three of the men’s singles matches were forced into a deciding match tiebreaker.
Felix Schueller, playing at No.1 singles, rallied from one-set down to win 7-6 (6) in the second set and 10-5 in the match tiebreak.
Yann Kaelin dropped his match tiebreak at No. 2, while Bal used a 10-7 tiebreak to win in the No. 4 spot.
Alexander Roggenkamp and
Jacob Spizman breezed to wins at the No.5 and 6 singles positions, respectively.
The GCU women were dominant throughout the afternoon, losing only 8 games total over the nine matches, en route to a 9-0 win.
Priscilla Annoual (No. 1),
Lana Macukat (No. 4) and
Frederique Van de Velde (No.5) all won their matches without dropping a single game.
The women are ranked 14
th in the nation in the preseason poll, while Annoual was tabbed as the 26
th-best player in the nation.
The Grand Canyon men will play a doubleheader tomorrow, facing Western New Mexico (ranked 30
th nationally) at noon and Metro State at 6 p.m. The women will face Sonoma State at noon. All matches will be played at Paseo.
GCU 9 MSUB 0 (women)
GCU 8 MSUB 1 (men)