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Tennis picks up three wins over weekend

by Andy Chon

The Grinnell men's tennis team is making its presence known early in the Midwest Conference this season, taking down three more schools during the second busy weekend this season for the Pioneers.

The tennis team picked up a win on the road against the University if Wisconsin, Oshkosh, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Friday and another pair of wins at home the next day against Cornell and Buena Vista. The three wins give the Pioneers a record of 6-0 only three weeks into their '06 season.

Grinnell had no problem defeating the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, handily taking all of the singles and doubles matches and shutting down the Titans, 7-0. Nate Fox '09 had a great game, taking down his opponent in straight sets, 6-0 and 6-0. Fellow first year, Dan LaFountaine also gave a strong performance, defeating the Titan's number one, 6-1, 6-0.

The Pioneers did not waste any time on Saturday, taking on Cornell at 9 a.m. on the indoor tennis courts in the PEC. Rick Fenbert '06, LaFountaine and Fox all took down their singles opponents in straight sets.

In the doubles competition, Eric Ohrn '07 and Jordan Lee '08 swept their opponents 8-0, closing their match without dropping a single game. LaFountaine and Fox left no room for doubt, finishing their sweep of Cornell by shutting down the Ram's number one doubles team 8-0.

Cornell did manage to take a point from Grinnell by defeating Julian West '06 who forced his match into a third set before falling to Cornell's Tom Jennings, but the match wasn't enough for the Rams, who fell 6-1 against the Pioneers.

Grinnell took on Buena Vista University Saturday afternoon, putting up another perfect 7-0 victory and sweeping the Buena Vista Beavers into a rapidly growing pile of scoreless opponents.

"Buena Vista hasn't really had a lot of time to build their program up, so we kind of played our secondary lineup against them," said Ohrn. "We got the chance to play a few guys that don't usually get into the lineup."

Ohrn defeated his singles opponent without losing a game and Lee only lost one game before winning his match, 6-1, 6-0. Joe Jankolovits '07, took down his Buena Vista opponent, 6-1, 6-1 in his first singles match of the '06 season.

The Pioneers are in good shape for their upcoming match against Carleton College on March 4 in Bloomington, Minn., which many Grinnell players view as their first true test of the season.

"We played our full lineups against both Cornell and UW Oshkosh because we wanted our best players to get in as much time and experience as they could before going into the game against Carleton," said Ohrn. "Carleton is our first real challenge of the year and we're all real excited to have a school coming up that is around the same level as us, because you only get better playing against quality opponents."

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