GAME STATS 1 |
GAME STATS 2 Lake Geneva, Wis. -- After beginning its weekend schedule against UW-Whitewater on Friday afternoon, the Thunder men's tennis team returned to the courts on Saturday for two more non-conference matchups. In the morning contest, Wheaton was defeated by #36 Grinnell College by a score of 6-3. The Thunder then ended their three-match lineup with a fixture against Luther College that resulted in the same final score. Wheaton's record is now 1-3 on the young campaign.
The Thunder took on their second-straight ranked opponent on Saturday morning when they faced the Grinnell Pioneers. Just as it happened in Friday's matchup with Whitewater, their strong opponents won two of the three doubles fixtures with Wheaton's win coming at #2 doubles.
Joey Geisz and
Jacob Williams continued their perfect start to the season with a solid 8-3 result, while Grinnell claimed the other two matches at 8-5 scorelines.
Williams then earned his second win of the day in his #4 singles contest, edging his Pioneer rival, 7-6, in the first frame before cruising to a 6-2 second-set victory.
Jack Booker accounted for Wheaton's third win against Grinnell via a tiebreaker in his #1 singles duel. The senior captured the first set at 6-4 and won the race to ten points in the necessary tiebreak to earn a competitive point for the Thunder. Two of the other four singles matches also went into ten-point tiebreak situations, but the Pioneers claimed both wins to earn the 6-3 team victory.
In the evening matchup, the Luther Norse topped Wheaton by the same 6-3 margin to snap a run of three-straight 5-4 match victories by the Thunder over Luther in this weekend's competition.
Andrew Jang and
Tim Steiner battled hard at #3 doubles and forced a tiebreak at seven games apiece, but their Norse rivals held on for a narrow victory to give the Iowa team a 2-1 advantage heading into singles play. Once again, Wheaton's point came from the #2 doubles position, as
Joey Geisz and
Jacob Williams combined for an 8-4 victory, meaning that Williams concluded his day with a perfect 3-0 match record.
Tim Steiner posted his second individual match win of the weekend at #2 singles to give the Thunder their second point of the contest, sweeping his Luther counterpart aside with a pair of 6-3 set results. Geisz then doubled up for his second victory of the evening with a 6-4, 6-3 result in his #3 singles matchup. Parallel to Wheaton's morning match against Grinnell, Luther claimed two tiebreak wins in singles play to gain the necessary five points.
Evan Walther did well to earn a second-set bagel in his collegiate debut, but his Luther opponent captured the decisive third frame to steal the point for his team.
Despite not winning a team match in this weekend's event, the Thunder will be boosted by various positive results in each contest and will return home for their next fixture. Wheaton welcomes Hope College to Centre Court in Hanover Park for a Friday evening non-conference affair next week.
